Expense management firm Brex has snagged a veteran of Affirm and American Express to lead its compliance program and build out its current risk frameworks. 

Sibongile Ngako, the fintech’s chief compliance officer, joined Brex this month after a three-year stint at buy now, pay later provider Affirm, where she served as vice president of compliance. Prior to that, she spent nearly a decade at card company Amex and a handful of years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a bank examiner and analyst. 

When the company announced her appointment July 22, Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi called Ngako’s industry expertise “invaluable” as the fintech strives to innovate while maintaining compliance in an “increasingly complex regulatory landscape.” Ngako spoke to that balance, and what Brex can take away from the Synapse collapse, during a recent interview with Banking Dive.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

SIBONGILE NGAKO: With my decades of experience in the fintech and banking sectors, I’ve gained a deep understanding of the complex and evolving regulatory landscape and the challenges and opportunities it presents for the industry. My long-term goal is to ensure that Brex continues to operate with integrity and transparency, providing our customers with the highest level of trust.

Brex already has an established compliance program, which is the most critical first step and one of the main things that drew me to join the team. Effective compliance risk management is about striking the balance between a risk-based approach and responsible agility. As the compliance program continues to evolve, it will be increasingly effective at supporting Brex’s business, which will in turn help Brex continue to be nimble while remaining compliant. 

Brex’s core mission is to make every dollar count for businesses around the world, which means that from day one the team has been handling some of the most sensitive and consequential data a company can have — financials and employee information. Any research and development work at Brex keeps compliance and customer protection front and center. If it's moving too quickly for customer protection to keep pace, it’s not happening. 

Moreover, I would maintain that laying the foundation of a regulatory compliance framework actually helps a company move more quickly and ensures that everyone is on the same page when key decisions are being made that impact compliance risk management. 

The bar is incredibly high across the board when it comes to handling money, and that's especially true for AI. It’s a foundational part of the Brex platform, which has been leveraging AI since inception across underwriting, fraud, receipt matching, merchant categorization and other product areas. That’s led to guardrails and protocols being established to ensure the safety, privacy and security of our customers, which I'm looking forward to continuing to build upon. Privacy is paramount: For example, customer data is protected by strict security protocols and is not used to improve third-party AI models. 

Some companies are heavily reliant on third-party vendors like Synapse, Evolve and others, making them more susceptible to incidents like these. This news highlights the extreme importance of building as much of your payment rails and financial infrastructure as feasible in-house — something Brex does and takes very seriously. 

Controlling as much of the financial infrastructure as possible allows Brex to process and settle transactions faster (and more securely) and ship new products and features in a more nimble and efficient way. Similar to our approach to AI, the bar is incredibly high when it comes to partnering with anyone who would be interacting with our customers — we invest in trust first and foremost, and hold ourselves to the highest standard possible. That applies to how we develop our products, and it also applies to the select third-party partners that we do work with.

By Caitlin Mullen on July 31, 2024
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