Compliance analysts spend most of their day clearing alerts that were never real risk. In this episode of Inside the Signal, Sigma360 CEO Stuart Jones, Jr. sits down with Matt Monarch, Sigma360’s VP of Product, to talk about how the company builds AI that takes that burden off analysts, and why trust, explainability and configurability are part of the design from the start.
Matt shares how he moved from tech support into product leadership in compliance, and why he calls himself a technologist first. He explains the origin of Sigma360’s L1 Investigator Agent: it grew out of UX research that had nothing to do with AI, after the team watched dozens of investigators do the same manual work every day. From there, the conversation covers the Adverse Media Agent, which lets compliance teams write their risk policies in plain language, and the Oversight Dashboard, which lets firms run AI agents alongside their analysts and review every case where the two disagreed.
Stuart and Matt also talk about the gap between AI investment and actual AI deployment, the friction firms run into with procurement and regulators, and Sigma360’s newest release: an Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) Agent built with institutions that do EDD work today. They finish with Matt’s favorite project and his prediction for where AI in financial crime will be a year from now.
Key Takeaways & Discussion Highlights
- Great AI products start with user research, not AI. The L1 Investigator Agent came out of a UX project to simplify the platform’s workflow. Watching investigators every day showed how much of their manual work could be automated.
- Trust is the product. “This agent is never going to do anything that you don’t explicitly allow it to.” Sigma360 designed oversight, configurability and explainability into its agents from day one, because AI can’t be deployed if it can’t be trusted.
- Side-by-side testing proves value. The Oversight Dashboard lets firms run an agent alongside their analysts, sometimes for months, and then review every disagreement. That shows whether the policy, the analyst or the agent configuration needs to change.
- EDD at 10x speed means 10x coverage. The new EDD Agent collects internal and external data, summarizes it and scores the risk in line with each firm’s written policy, while the analyst still makes the final risk decision. “If you’re doing something 10 times as fast, you have the opportunity to do 10 times as much of it.”
- Data gives AI its edge. An agent that pulls from separate systems and connects them on the fly is hard to scale. Sigma360’s network graph combines sanctions, corporate registry, trade and adverse media data into one picture of risk before the AI ever runs.
- AI is becoming the expected norm. Two years ago, buyers asked whether a vendor used AI at all. Last year, they expected it. In 2026, the focus is rollout. Matt’s prediction: AI will soon be “an assumed enabler,” not a feature anyone mentions.
Episode Timestamps
- 00:00 – Cold Open: Finding the Signal in the Noise
- 00:51 – Introduction of Matt Monarch, VP of Product at Sigma360
- 01:31 – Matt’s Path into Compliance Tech: From Tech Support to Product Leadership
- 03:02 – Product Philosophy: User First, Market First
- 04:02 – The AI360 Story: How User Research Led to the L1 Investigator Agent
- 05:35 – From Sanctions Alerts to Adverse Media: Building the Adverse Media Agent
- 07:02 – The Oversight Dashboard: Proving AI’s Value to Audit & Regulators
- 08:35 – HyperScan & Live Web Summary: Battle-Testing AI in the Open
- 09:38 – Closing the AI Adoption Gap: Trust, Explainability & Configurability
- 11:23 – Friction Points: Procurement, Regulators & Policy-Driven AI
- 13:22 – What’s Next for AI in Financial Crime
- 14:31 – Introducing the EDD Agent: Built Hand-in-Hand with Institutions
- 17:48 – 10x Faster, 10x More Coverage: Expanding EDD
- 18:18 – Why a Unique Data Foundation Gives AI an Edge
- 19:56 – Matt’s Favorite Build: The Adverse Media Agent
- 22:06 – Crystal Ball: AI as an Assumed Enabler
- 23:37 – Wrap-Up
Featured Guest
Matt Monarch is Vice President of Product at Sigma360, where he leads product strategy, development, and innovation. His focus is making compliance teams more efficient through thoughtful application of leading-edge technologies. Before Sigma360, Matt led international development teams across governance, compliance, and financial services at Wolters Kluwer and NuArca. He holds a Master’s in Computer Information Systems from Boston University.
Music: “Minimalist (Neutral Focus)” by Sascha Ende (ende.app), licensed under CC BY 4.0.
