German AML regtech Hawk AI names Michael Shearer as new chief solution officer
German anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud prevention regtech Hawk AI has appointed former HSBC compliance head Michael Shearer as its new chief solution officer, effective this month.
Hawk AI hires Michael Shearer as chief solution officer
Leveraging nearly 30 years of experience in intelligence and banking, Shearer will aim to help the regtech in its mission to prevent the financing of terrorism, human trafficking and other serious crimes through its AML solutions.
Founded in 2018 and based in Munich, Hawk AI provides a modular solution that combines explainable AI and cloud technology with transaction monitoring, payment screening and fraud prevention features. Claiming to process “billions of transactions across 60 countries”, its self-prescribed “stellar growth” throughout 2023 was spearheaded by a $17 million Series B last January.
Shearer amassed the bulk of his professional expertise during an almost seven-year tenure at HSBC, for which he most recently served as group head of compliance product management, among other leadership roles. Prior to this, he spent 20 years working in government intelligence and counter terrorism roles.
He cites the creation of both an analytics platform capable of risk detection across multiple consumer types and a cloud-based machine learning platform for financial crime detection as two of his main achievements at HSBC.
Speaking on his latest appointment, Shearer says the task of making the world a safer place through AML solutions is “as urgent and important today as it has ever been”, and he hopes to help his new colleagues to “reshape the global fight against financial crime”.
