From Banking to AI: Tim Khamzin on Transforming Compliance

Innovation comes in many areas, and compliance professionals need not only to be ready for it but also to embrace it. Join Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, as he visits with top innovative minds, thinkers, and creators in the award-winning Innovation in Compliance podcast. In this episode, host Tom Fox welcomes Tim Khamzin, Founder & CEO of Vivox AI, to discuss building explainable, trusted AI agents for financial crime compliance teams. Tim describes his background in banking operations automation, including large-scale digital transformation and the development of compliance products, and explains how large language models since 2023–2024 enable the automation of unstructured compliance work without extensive model training. He outlines key challenges in AML/KYC operations—15% of bank headcount tied to compliance, heavy manual repetitive investigations across multiple systems, and cultural resistance to adopting technology. Tim emphasizes “explainability” through consistent, repeatable investigations with audit logs and screenshots that mirror human workflows, and “trust” through transparency, compliant vendor choices, and clear communication of limitations. Tim introduces Vivox compliance analyst, “Rachel,” a platform of collaborating agents that supports onboarding, customer due diligence, and false-positive reduction, improved via structured human feedback (thumbs up/down) to learn firm-specific standards. He explains how Vivox stays aligned with evolving regulations by engaging with bodies such as the UK FCA and tracking frameworks such as the EU AI Act and Singapore guidance, with a focus on auditability and explainability. Tim predicts most compliance work will shift to AI agents, with humans handling complex cases and a new role of “compliance engineer” emerging to configure and evaluate agents, alongside industry consolidation and operating-system-style vendor platforms. Key highlights: From Banking Automation to Founding Vivox AI: The Opportunity in LLMs What’s Broken Today: Manual Investigations, Backlogs, and Culture Gaps Explainable + Trusted AI: Audit Trails, Screenshots, and Transparency Regulators’ Top AI Concerns: Black Box, Bias, and 99% Accuracy Inside ‘Rachel’: The AI Compliance Analyst & Human-in-the-Loop Feedback The Future: Compliance Engineers, Agent “Operating Systems,” and Consolidation Resources: Tim Khamzin on LinkedIn Vivox AI Innovation in Compliance was recently honored as the Number 4 podcast in Risk Management by 1,000,000 Podcasts.