Building Trust Through Visible Compliance

For Alina Šilgalytė, Chief Compliance Officer at VIALET, compliance is not only a regulatory requirement. It is a practical governance function that helps the organisation operate with clarity, consistency, and accountability.

In complex operating environments, trust cannot rely on assumptions. It has to be supported by clear ownership, documented decisions, traceable controls, and consistent oversight.

From Controls to Evidence

Strong controls are essential for any regulated financial institution. But controls are only meaningful when they can be understood, evidenced, reviewed, and improved.

Visible compliance means building a control environment where key responsibilities, decisions, escalation paths, and oversight activities are documented and traceable – supporting stronger internal accountability and more confident decision-making across teams.

Compliance by Design

Compliance is most effective when regulatory expectations, internal control requirements, and governance implications are considered early – reflected in the way processes are designed, not remediated after the fact.

Involving compliance in product, operational, and process discussions reduces uncertainty, avoids late-stage remediation, and supports decisions that are aligned with regulatory expectations from the outset.

Speed as a Result of Clarity

Delays often come from unclear ownership, fragmented decision-making, or regulatory requirements being considered too late – not from compliance itself.

Clear processes, defined responsibilities, and practical escalation paths allow teams to move faster without weakening the control environment. Good compliance creates structure for controlled, sustainable growth.

The Human Side of Expertise

What differentiates a strong compliance culture is not only the existence of policies and controls, but the way teams apply them in practice.

At VIALET, Compliance functions as part of the governance framework: advising on regulatory expectations, supporting internal control discipline, overseeing compliance risks, and helping teams translate requirements into practical decisions.

Visible compliance builds trust through evidence, accountability, and consistent execution.

We asked Alina three questions the post couldn’t answer on its own.

On how second-line compliance creates value for the teams that do face clients:

“Compliance sits in the second line of defence at VIALET – we don’t face clients directly. The value we create is for the people who do: sales, account managers, AML, customer support. When a client-facing team is dealing with a complex situation under pressure, they need to make a decision confidently and quickly. If the framework they’re working within is unclear, undocumented, or inconsistently applied, they hesitate. Or they escalate unnecessarily. Or they make a call they’re not sure about.

What good second-line compliance does is build the framework clearly enough that the first line can move without constantly needing to check. The traceability isn’t for the client – they never see it. It’s for the person making the decision on a case, so they know exactly what the boundary is and why it exists.

Part of making that work in practice is accessibility. If the first line can’t reach compliance easily, the framework breaks down at the human level. We maintain dedicated channels – Slack, direct lines – so questions get answered before decisions get made, not after.”

On processes that became faster because compliance was considered earlier:

“A clearer example is in how we approach acceptance criteria – for clients, for documentation, for what gets escalated and what doesn’t. When those criteria are vague or underdefined, the first line loses time making judgment calls that shouldn’t require judgment every single time. Or they come to compliance repeatedly with the same type of question.

Where we add speed is by making the framework precise enough that the answer already exists before the question gets asked. That might mean tightening the guidance on a document type, clarifying what triggers a referral versus what falls within existing parameters, or making sure the criteria the AML team is working from remain aligned with current regulatory expectations. The process we’re improving isn’t our process – it’s the one we’re there to support.”

On what early compliance involvement in a product launch actually changes:

“The most visible change is what doesn’t happen. There are fewer surprises late in the build. Fewer moments where someone says ‘can we actually do this?’ two weeks before go-live. When compliance is involved early, teams understand not just what the requirement is but why it exists – and that changes how they design. They’re not working around compliance, they’re working with the constraints already in mind. It doesn’t mean every launch will be frictionless, but the friction moves earlier in the process, where it’s cheaper and faster to resolve.”