As regulatory expectations grow in breadth and complexity, firms face increasing pressure to manage compliance in a more structured and efficient way. For Jerome Lussan, founder of Leo RegTech, this challenge has long been evident. Drawing on his background in regulatory law and consultancy, he set out to build a platform that would unify fragmented workflows, remove manual burden and give firms far greater oversight.
Jerome says Leo began as a direct response to the recurring inefficiencies he observed throughout his career. “It’s very much my brainchild,” he says. “I was a lawyer in regulatory finance and then a consultant in asset management, and all the work we did seemed like it would benefit from systematisation.”
Compliance work, he notes, depends heavily on repetition and accuracy, yet teams are stretched thinner than ever. “Humans have less time now than 50 years ago, and the rules are probably tenfold.” Larger firms could cope by throwing more staff at the problem, but for small and midsized firms the burden was significant.
“Everything was fragmented and very manual,” he says. “So I started to automate every process I could think of and developed technology around that.”
The Leo technology
From inception, Leo was built as a cloud-based SaaS platform with a modular architecture. This allows firms to tailor the technology to their needs while benefiting from a structure suitable for financial services, law firms and other professional environments.
The core of the platform is its compliance management module. It includes a control plan mapping where risks lie, along with ongoing monitoring through coded, algorithmsupported reports. By offering structured answer options in full text, Leo minimises the time users spend writing and reduces both grammatical and compliance-related errors.
“We offer the user a lot of prepped work which they can amend or supersede,” Jerome explains.
Around this core sit key registers and attestations used to track staff responsibilities, declarations and permissions. Whether a staff member needs to attest to abiding by internal policies or declare gifts and personal trades, these processes are embedded into the same system. “If I’ve saved 50% of my time and three-quarters of the work is already captured through registers, attestations and reporting, I’m very close to full compliance,” he says.
Training is another major component. Leo’s training module allows firms to assign courses, track attendance, test understanding and automatically update registers. This removes the need for maintaining external spreadsheets or coordinating manually across departments. “Chasing people across the firm can be time-consuming,” he says. “With Leo, all of that loops into one place.”
Further modules address specific needs, such as automated personal trade approvals or blacklisting. The most recent addition is Eva, Leo’s AI assistant. Trained specifically on financial services regulation, Eva responds instantly to compliance queries and integrates directly with FCA, AMF and SEC sources and other regulatory materials.
“We trained our model around compliance for financial services, private equity and hedge fund structures,” he says. “It gives a holistic system where compliance departments can connect with all their users and bring everything together in one place.”
Pain points
Jerome sees Leo as a way to eliminate the heavy manual workload that clutters compliance operations. “We eradicate the need for note taking, Excel, Word, email chains,” he says.
He gives the example of onboarding a client. Traditionally, a firm may send a form, separately request passports or ID verification, and manually run background checks. “Instead, we thought: why not link the request form to document requests automatically?” he explains. When a client enters their name, the system can trigger background checks and collect identity documentation in a single workflow.
Leo also helps reduce audit anxiety by enabling firms to show regulators or auditors what was done and when. Information edits are timestamped and traceable. “You can literally give the regulator access to the software and relevant activity is tracked,” he says.
For organisations operating across multiple entities or jurisdictions, Jerome highlights Leo’s ability to centralise oversight while maintaining local independence. Whether firms need visibility across several countries or separate divisions, Leo consolidates everything in one environment.
Training and efficiency are also major areas of value. With regulators increasingly scrutinising staff knowledge — particularly around financial crime and market abuse — Leo helps ensure required training is delivered and evidenced. “Training efficiency is very important to the first line of defence,” he says.
The Leo USP
Jerome points to three main differentiators. First is the company’s commitment to client feedback. “We have a roadmap with around 100 points, and it grows and changes based on feedback,” he says. “We try to be reactive, and I don’t think other companies do that.”
Second is Leo’s positioning as a genuinely end-to-end platform. Many competitors focus on just one area, such as KYC, forcing firms to adopt multiple systems. “That’s not good enough,” he argues. “Leo bridges everything.”
The third is the degree of customisation. Users can adjust reports, registers and templates without knowing how to code or paying for custom development. “A lot of competitors don’t offer that. You have to pay them to change something, and it’s slow.”
Finally, Leo benefits from being built by compliance professionals. “It’s not engineered in a vacuum,” he says. “It’s adapted to the professional needs of the industry.”
Cutting compliance
For clients, the benefit lies in workflow cohesion. Scheduling tasks becomes simpler through an integrated calendar, chasing staff is automated, and all interactions feed into the same ecosystem. Users no longer need to switch between different systems or manage multiple passwords, thanks to single sign-on (SSO).
The platform significantly reduces email reliance. For example, instead of exchanging multiple messages to request documents, Leo consolidates everything within a single workflow, ensuring nothing is missed. “Email is heavy,” Jerome says. “If we can get rid of that, we eliminate friction.”
Centralised administration is another advantage. Compliance officers can view training records, outstanding tasks or declarations across entire teams at a glance. This simplicity has attracted a growing client base: 600 companies served and around 4,000+ active users.
Leo’s AI tools
Eva, Leo’s AI tool, is designed specifically for compliance. It can answer questions instantly using information drawn from the FCA Handbook, the AMF, SEC and other relevant sources.
This reduces the need for junior staff to seek answers from senior colleagues and eliminates time spent searching online. “AI is your memory,” Jerome says.
Eva also generates tailored compliance policies based on a firm’s permissions — a step regulators increasingly require.
“From a quality point of view, it will support policy professionals to focus more on high value tasks,” Jerome communicates.
Looking ahead, Eva will become even more integrated with user environments. It will surface overdue tasks, alert users to anomalies, and assist with quarterly controls. A soon-to-launch capability will allow Eva to vet financial promotions against COBs rules, including documents containing charts or images.
Future plans
The company has several growth areas planned. Expansion in the US is a major focus, alongside deeper development in Europe, including Luxembourg. Leo is also growing in the Caribbean, supporting markets such as the Cayman Islands, BVI and Barbados.
New modules are planned, including tools for regulatory horizon scanning and enhanced training tailored to more jurisdictions. Leo is also seeing strong interest from law firms and expects accounting firms to follow, given similar onboarding and KYC needs.
Jerome is exploring ways to improve connectivity for users, including potential chat environments that could be anonymous or visible depending on preference. Internally, the company plans to continue strengthening its team structure, including through broader share schemes as it grows.
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