Home · Why JUSTE

Born out of necessity

JUSTE began when we realised that the newly regulated SME firms were being asked to run a bankgrade AML programme, but many were only doing basic KYC and KYB.

AML administration, the policy, the training, the supervision — will always be a burden; that is the nature of the obligation. What we could remove was the cognitive drain: the not-knowing, the second-guessing, the reconstructing from memory. We learned this in the art market, where no one wants to be a compliance officer — so the tool had to explain itself, guiding a non-expert through each AML task safely, and fast.

JUSTE was built to turn those obligations into a governed operating system. Controls have owners and states. Highly trained AI agents analyse sanctions, PEP and adverse-media results, separating false positives from genuine matches with a high degree of accuracy and dramatically reducing the manual review burden. The firm’s own risk policy becomes a layer of codified guardrails. Routine SDD and CDD can be handled safely by designated staff, while higher-risk cases are escalated and EDD remains reserved for the MLRO. The result is less cognitive burden for the people doing the work and a clearer, attributable record for the firm.

The first idea, and the one that matters most

Codified risk policy guardrails

Everyone in this market says their AI is human-supervised. In practice that usually means a person can agree with the machine or disagree with it, and nobody records which happened or why.

We built the first working model of executable risk policy governance. Your written AML policy becomes rules that run at the moment of decision. Where the policy requires a different answer than the AI proposed, the guardrail applies it, records both, and locks the field.

The AI recommends. The policy decides.

Each risk type gets an AI recommendation. Your rules sit above it. When they disagree, the rule wins — automatically, every time, for every user.

The override is the evidence

What the AI assessed, what the rule required, which rule and which policy version, and who reviewed it. This is exactly the chain an inspection asks for, produced as a by-product of the work.

Locked, not merely suggested

A field rated by policy rule cannot be quietly changed at the desk. Changing it requires a recorded review, so a guardrail is a real constraint rather than a warning somebody can click past.

Alignment is measured too

Where a case departs materially from policy, JUSTE records it as a material adjustment. A pattern of them tells an MLRO that the policy, or the practice, needs attention.

RISK ASSESSMENTManual✓ Policy rules applied
Sanctions screeningLowMediumHighRecommended
Adverse mediaLowMediumHighRecommended
PEPLowMediumHighRecommended
Activity and fundsLowMediumHighRecommended
Territorial risk LowMediumHigh
AI assessed Low; policy rule mandating High for this nationality upgraded the rating.
AI suggested Low → changed to High by policy rule
Rated by policy rule — review required to change
Risk policy alignmentAlignedMinorMaterialRecorded against the decision
Overall risk ratingLowMediumHighSet by policy rule. Escalation triggered.
Every state above is stored with the decisionPolicy v3.1

Illustrative view of a governed risk assessment. The client here would have passed as low risk on the AI's reading alone.

The second idea

Intelligence-first screening

Traditional onboarding collects documents and then decides what the client is. That is backwards: it spends the most effort at the point of least information, and treats a twenty-year client exactly like a stranger.

JUSTE screens first. Sanctions, PEP, adverse media, activity and funds, and territorial risk run before anything is asked of the client. What comes back decides what due diligence is proportionate — and for most clients, that is very little.

Low risk

Simplified due diligence

An ID document added to a clean, policy-governed screening result is a complete, inspection-ready record. No chase, no checklist, no delay.

Medium risk

Customer due diligence

Evidence requests and questions tied to the specific risk drivers screening surfaced — not a generic pack sent to everyone.

High risk

Enhanced due diligence

Deeper questioning, source-of-funds evidence, tracked review and recorded MLRO approval before the client is accepted.

The third idea

Your whole team can run AML, because the rails decide what they can't do.

This is the change most firms feel in their capacity rather than their compliance. Low and medium-risk administration — which is the overwhelming majority of the book — can be completed by any qualified team member, because the guardrails constrain what is possible and lift out anything that needs a specialist.

Qualified team memberIn scope, trained, acknowledged the current policy
Low risk

Completes the administration end to end. Scan, screen, ID verification, record issued. No queue, no waiting for the compliance officer to have a free afternoon.

No escalationThe record is complete and counted. The MLRO sees it in the dashboard rather than in their inbox.
Qualified team memberWorking inside the guardrails
Medium risk

Handles customer due diligence with the system directing which evidence to request and which questions to ask. The classification stays governed by policy throughout — they cannot rate their way out of a control.

Escalates only if the policy says soCertain drivers, or a material policy adjustment, push the file up automatically.
MLRO The case is reserved for the MLRO.
High risk

Enhanced due diligence, source of funds, targeted questioning and a recorded approval or refusal. The file arrives already assembled, with the screening, the rule that triggered it and the evidence so far attached.

Escalation is automaticTriggered by the guardrail, not by someone noticing. Where a firm has no in-house specialist, external AML experts supervise these cases with them.

The MLRO can be assisted in their team on the platform by an external AML expert with specialist analysis, source-of-funds or source-of-wealth review, or other expert support. But accountability remains with the MLRO at all times.

The fourth idea

Mobile intake, by whoever is standing there

Compliance work has traditionally been trapped behind the one person licensed to do it, which is why onboarding waits until Tuesday. JUSTE moves intake to the point of contact.

Any qualified team member in scope can open the app, scan a client's ID, and start a governed record. The guardrails travel with them, so the junior at the front desk operates inside exactly the same policy as the MLRO.

0:00

Scan the ID

On a phone, at the counter, in the meeting room or at the fair stand. Nothing for the client to install or fill in.

After 20 seconds

Screening runs

Risk is assessed and classified against your policy before a single further question is put to the client.

After 2 minutes

The next steps appear

Written out in plain language, so the person at the desk can explain what is needed and why, there and then.

Completed in 4 minutes

The record exists

Inspection-ready for a low-risk client, and already counted in the firm's audit-readiness score.

How that adds up

The same four words, meaning something different.

Everyone claims AI with human oversight. Here is what the phrase means in practice on each side.

A generic ruleset decides the risk level
Your own policy decides it, as executable rules
ID capture first, risk assessed afterwards
Risk assessed first, so the effort fits the client
A human can agree or disagree, unrecorded
The override is recorded with rule, reason and version
Compliance bottlenecked behind one specialist
Any qualified team member works inside the rails
Escalation depends on somebody noticing
Escalation is triggered by the policy rule itself
The tool assumes you already have a policy
JUSTE writes the policy, then runs it
You find out your position during an inspection
You find out from your own readiness score
Recognition

Independently noticed, not self-declared.

Juniper ResearchPlatinum Winner, KYC Innovation 2026
FCA Innovation Pathway2026 participant
RegTech Insight Awards Europe2026 — six nominations
AIFinTech1002026 nominee
Legal GeekStartup Programme 2026
Clio App DirectoryIntegration partner for legal firms

Participation in the FCA Innovation Pathway does not constitute FCA authorisation or endorsement. Programme and award references are shown for context.

Watch a guardrail overrule the AI on one of your own clients.

It takes about two minutes to see, and it is the fastest way to understand what makes JUSTE different from everything else you have been shown.