OpusDatum turns 18: A coming of age

June 20, 2025

by OpusDatum

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This month, OpusDatum celebrates a significant milestone: our 18th anniversary. It’s an opportunity not just for celebration, but for reflection on what has been built, the challenges we’ve faced, and the values that’ve guided us from the very beginning.

What began as a determined venture, with no external backing and plenty of resolve, has matured into a consultancy known for its depth, discretion, and dependability in navigating financial crime, compliance and operational risk. We’ve never been one for noise or self-congratulation, but turning 18 feels like a good moment to pause and take stock.

A steady ascent

OpusDatum wasn’t founded on grand declarations or flashy branding. It was built carefully and deliberately through hard work, subject matter expertise, and a steadfast commitment to quality. In a world of rapid change and short-termism, we chose to go the long way round, prioritising substance over speed and depth over scale.

That approach has served us well. Over the years, we’ve become a trusted partner to financial institutions operating in some of the most complex regulatory and risk environments. Whether designing bespoke frameworks or developing specialist RegTech tools, our goal has remained the same: to make risk and compliance practical, intelligent, and quietly effective.

Milestones that made us

2007: Secured our first multinational client – a clear signal that boutique expertise, delivered well, could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Big Four.
2010: Introduced HorizonIQ, our first strategic intelligence tool, designed to anticipate risk rather than just react to it.
2012: Developed LinkPro, our foundational tool for those who need to ‘follow the money’ and expose hidden relationships buried in financial data.
2014: Established a base at Level39, Canary Wharf, joining one of London’s leading tech and finance hubs during a key phase of our growth.
2018: Launched GeoRisk, bringing geographic risk to life through visual mapping and jurisdictional red-flag analysis.
2020: Fully embraced remote working, ensuring seamless delivery while continuing to support clients through the uncertainty of the pandemic with stability, responsiveness and clarity.
2022: Provided critical support through the rapidly shifting sanctions landscape following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, helping clients interpret, implement and operationalise new restrictions at speed and with confidence.
2024: Released WireCheck, a real-time screening tool to strengthen FATF Travel Rule compliance and reduce operational drag.
2025: Expanded our thought leadership offering with WTR microsite, white papers and practical toolkits to support real-world implementation.

Our thanks

We’re deeply grateful to those who’ve supported us – clients, collaborators, advisors and colleagues alike. Many of you have worked with us across years, even decades, and it’s those long-term relationships that define our success more than any single project.

Thank you for your trust, candour, and high expectations. You’ve helped shape who we are, and we don’t take that lightly.

What comes next: Deep work, Clear purpose

As we look ahead, we remain focused on what we do best: practical innovation, strategic clarity, and independent thinking. There’s no reinvention here; simply a continued commitment to progress that’s thoughtful, relevant, and well-executed.

A few things on the horizon:

Reimagining travel rule implementation: The FATF Travel Rule was intended to bring transparency to digital asset transfers, yet practical adoption remains patchy. We’re working to change that by helping firms implement it intelligently, across borders, and without unnecessary friction.
Turning policy into product: Our microsite and implementation kits translate guidance into something usable. Whether it’s crypto controls, sanctions governance or wire transfer procedures, we’re helping compliance teams move from policy to practice.
Embedding logic into tools: With platforms like WireCheck and GeoRisk, we’re bringing risk logic into the heart of operations, making controls more transparent, responsive, and genuinely useful.
Building coalitions, not empires: We’re firm believers in collaboration. From cross-jurisdictional initiatives to joint client pilots, we recognise that the big challenges can’t be solved in silos, and we’re committed to contributing to the development of collective capability.

None of this is about disruption for its own sake. It’s about measured change built on experience, guided by evidence, and delivered with care.

Here’s to the road ahead

Eighteen is an age of maturity and of possibility. We’re proud of how far we’ve come, and quietly ambitious about what’s still to come.

To all of you who have been part of the OpusDatum story, thank you. We look forward to what the next chapter brings, and to continuing to earn your trust in the years ahead.