Despite the sweeping digital transformation across financial services, compliance teams across Europe are, in many cases, still stuck in the past. A surprising 93% of compliance officers continue to rely on spreadsheets as their primary tool for managing regulatory risk. Not because they don’t see the value in modern solutions—but because legacy habits, resource constraints, and slow procurement cycles often hold back innovation.

Yet the compliance landscape is evolving faster than the tools used to manage it. Regulators are no longer just interested in policies on paper—they expect structured, auditable, and real-time evidence of oversight and control. And for teams working in regulated financial services—especially fintechs—this growing complexity is starting to expose cracks in old processes.

It’s not about sensationalist warnings or dramatic headlines. The truth is more nuanced. Even well-resourced compliance teams struggle to maintain visibility, version control, and regulatory readiness when everything lives in fragmented Excel files. The risk isn’t malicious behavior—it’s operational fragility.

Incoming Storm: DORA, MiCA, AMLA, and More

The European Union is ushering in a new era of tech-forward regulation. Here's just a glimpse of what's arriving—and why it's putting pressure on already stretched compliance teams:

DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act): Effective January 2025, it mandates that all financial entities, including third-party ICT providers, demonstrate the ability to withstand, respond to, and recover from ICT-related disruptions and threats. This requires end-to-end risk management, resilience testing, and incident reporting structures.

MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets): Targets crypto service providers, introducing stricter transparency and governance requirements.

AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Authority): Set to become operational by 2026, it will centralize and coordinate AML supervision across the EU, driving harmonization but also increasing scrutiny.

NIS2 Directive: Expands cybersecurity obligations for critical entities in finance and beyond, requiring comprehensive risk assessments and incident management plans.

Each regulation adds new layers of documentation, audit readiness, stakeholder communication, and reporting expectations. And that’s just the European layer—global operations face an even denser compliance puzzle.

Why Excel Isn’t Enough Anymore

Spreadsheets offer a dangerous illusion of control. They’re flexible, familiar, and fast—but ill-equipped for the realities of modern compliance:

• No single source of truth: As teams grow, spreadsheets multiply. Version control breaks down, confusion sets in, and critical updates are missed.
  
  

• Audit nightmares: Without proper change logs or permission systems, Excel offers no traceability—putting firms at risk during regulatory reviews.
  
  

• Manual overload: Reporting becomes a time sink, prone to human error and omissions.
  
  

• No real-time intelligence: Spreadsheets can’t flag emerging risks, provide dashboards, or support scenario modeling.
  
  

  The cost of failure is steep—and visible. In late 2024, Klarna was fined SEK 500 million (≈ €44 million / $46 million) by Sweden’s Finansinspektionen for AML control weaknesses, including deficiencies in risk assessment and customer due-diligence systems . Across Europe, AML-related fines reached approximately €36 million in 2024 alone, with at least 30 enforcement actions against payment and e‑money firms. More recently, Revolut was hit with a €3.5 million penalty for gaps in monitoring customer transactions.

These numbers are not anomalies—they reflect a structural challenge. Behind every fine is a failure to manage complexity, to trace processes, to respond quickly. For compliance teams using Excel as the backbone of their operations, the next incident might not be far behind.

Why We Backed Complok

At Goose Valley Ventures, we spend our time looking beyond the buzzwords—focusing instead on real pain points faced by the financial sector. One of the clearest signals we’ve seen in the past year is the widening gap between regulatory expectations and operational readiness in compliance teams.

Complok stood out to us not just because of its product, but because of its insight into the root of the problem. It doesn’t try to reinvent compliance—it helps teams do the job they were hired to do, better. It brings structure where there’s chaos, oversight where there’s opacity, and automation where there’s unnecessary manual work.

What impressed us most was how Complok integrates with the workflows compliance teams already use. It respects the nuance of the industry and builds with a deep understanding of both regulatory expectations and operational constraints. This is not a Silicon Valley one-size-fits-all tool—it’s built in Europe, for European financial institutions, by a team who knows the terrain.

In a world of increasing regulatory pressure, we believe Complok will become a trusted operating system for compliance—especially for the next generation of fintechs, EMIs, and digital banks that don’t want to build massive internal risk teams from scratch.

Because building a world-class compliance function shouldn't mean relying on a patchwork of spreadsheets.

To stay ahead of EU compliance, you don’t just need better intentions—you need better infrastructure.