Japhet Gana on Solving the De-Risking Crisis in Global Digital Finance

As the global financial sector moves deeper into 2026, friction between high-growth fintech platforms and traditional banking institutions has intensified. Under heightened scrutiny from international regulators including the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Union’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), many legacy banks have accelerated de-risking, restricting access to correspondent banking and payment rails for fintech and digital asset platforms operating in higher-risk markets.

In this increasingly fragile ecosystem, Japhet Gana has emerged as a leading global strategist in financial integrity, regulatory compliance and risk architecture, building the interoperable governance infrastructure required to keep banks, fintechs, payment platforms and digital finance providers connected within regulator-approved frameworks.

With professional experience spanning commercial banking, cross-border fintech operations and digital finance platforms, Gana argues that most failed partnerships are not the result of bad intent, but of weak compliance architecture.

“I observed a critical failure where a multi-million-dollar bank–fintech partnership collapsed because their compliance frameworks could not interoperate,” Gana recalled. “For the future of finance to work, its integrity infrastructure must be interoperable, licensing-grade and strategically designed.”

Compliance as Growth Infrastruct
While many firms view regulatory controls as a brake on innovation, Gana advances a different philosophy: compliance as economic infrastructure.

“Compliance is the strongest growth asset,” he said. “Institutions that embed intelligent, seamless compliance into their customer journeys expand faster, retain correspondent banking access longer, and survive regulatory scrutiny more consistently.”

His work focuses on replacing fragmented point-solutions with Intelligent Risk Orchestration Frameworks, integrating customer due diligence, sanctions screening, fraud prevention and transaction monitoring into unified compliance architecture. These systems apply behavioral analytics and data-driven risk modeling to reduce false-positive alerts, improve detection of sophisticated financial crime, and maintain regulator-ready audit transparency.

Measurable Integrity in Emerging Markets
Across high-risk cross-border payment corridors, Gana has led the design of enterprise-grade compliance frameworks supporting pan-African fintech ecosystems serving millions of users. His models have maintained fraud ratios below 0.5% while enabling the compliant onboarding of previously underserved populations, preserving banking partnerships and safeguarding multi-million-dollar revenue flows.

“Financial integrity is economic infrastructure,” he said. “Weak compliance systems collapse trust, hurt consumers, and restrict financial inclusion. I build systems that allow innovation to grow safely.”

Gana holds an MBA and a rare portfolio of globally recognised certifications including Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Financial Crime Specialist (CFCS), Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator (CCI), Chainalysis Reactor Certification (CRC), and Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (MCIB). He has worked directly with regulators, correspondent banks and law-enforcement agencies across multiple jurisdictions.

As cross-border payments and digital finance continue to redefine global commerce, Gana’s message is increasingly clear: integrity is not simply a regulatory requirement, it is the foundation upon which modern finance must be built.