If you lead or support a fraud or AML program today, the last few years have likely felt compressed.
Real-time payments, AI-enabled scams, synthetic identities, deepfakes, and rising regulatory complexity did not arrive in sequence. They arrived together. For many teams, the pace of change has begun to exceed what their controls were originally designed to absorb.
To understand how leaders are navigating this shift, we surveyed senior executives across fraud, AML, risk, and financial crime technology. Respondents represented Tier 1 global banks, regional and community institutions, credit unions, and high-growth fintech and payments platforms.
Across roles and institution types, a shared tension emerged.
The gap between attacker speed and defender agility is widening. And many leaders are questioning whether the foundations they rely on today can realistically close that gap.
The full 2026 Fraud & AML Executive Report identifies five key insights shaping how programs are evolving. This blog surfaces three early signals that appeared repeatedly in the research, and why they are beginning to influence how leaders think about their next phase of investment.
1. The AI paradox. High concern, uneven readiness
Most leaders we spoke with described AI as both unavoidable and unsettling.
On one side, concern is widespread. In the survey, nearly three-quarters of respondents said AI-driven fraud is now a top risk, driven by deepfakes, synthetic identities, and increasingly automated scam operations.
On the other side, readiness is uneven. Roughly two-thirds acknowledged that their organizations still lack the data quality, labeling rigor, or infrastructure needed to use AI with confidence in fraud and AML.
This creates a paradox that many leaders recognize instinctively. Attackers are already using AI to experiment and adapt faster, while defenders remain constrained by slower governance cycles and unsophisticated data labels.
As a result, the conversation is starting to shift. Less toward which model to deploy next, and more toward whether programs are structurally prepared to absorb new signals and act on them at the pace AI-driven threats now demand.
2. FRAML momentum meets the reality of agility debt
There is little debate about direction. FRAML is no longer theoretical.
In our research, more than four in five institutions said they are actively considering or pursuing a more integrated FRAML operating model. The intent to converge fraud and AML is clear.
What is less clear is how quickly that intent can translate into execution. Nearly half of respondents cited data fragmentation and silos as one of their top strategic challenges.
Many programs are still running parallel workflows, supported by systems that were never designed to share context easily. Even when relevant data exists somewhere in the organization, it often cannot move fast enough to support decisions at the moment of risk.
Several leaders described this gap as a form of agility debt. The organization may be aligned on convergence, but the underlying data and operating assumptions have not fully caught up.
As FRAML moves from aspiration to execution, institutions are beginning to confront a harder question - what does convergence actually require beyond org charts and mandates.
3. Real-time payments are redefining decision constraints
Real-time payment rails are accelerating adoption. They are also exposing new limits.
In the survey, just over half of leaders pointed to faster fraud velocity as their top real-time payments challenge. Another quarter cited decision complexity, reflecting the difficulty of making accurate, explainable decisions in compressed timeframes.
As adoption scales, many teams are discovering that speed alone is not the constraint. The harder challenge is whether behavioral, transactional, and entity-level context can be evaluated together, consistently, and fast enough to intervene.
This is forcing a reassessment of long-held assumptions: where decisions should live, what information must be available at the moment, and which architectures can realistically support those requirements without introducing new risk or friction.
Looking ahead
Taken together, these signals point to an industry at an inflection point.
- AI-driven attacks are no longer episodic, and the gap between attacker speed and institutional response is increasingly visible at the board level.
- FRAML has moved from concept to execution, but data silos continue to impose agility debt.
- Real-time payments are testing long-standing assumptions about how and where risk decisions can be made.
For fraud and AML leaders, the question is no longer how to keep up. It is how to turn today’s structural constraints into a durable advantage.
This article reflects only part of what surfaced in the research. The full 2026 Fraud & AML Executive Report examines all five key insights in depth, supported by comprehensive survey data and deeper expert recommendation on how to close the gap.
