Graphs and RegTech: 5-Minute Interview with Julian Schibberges

“Graph databases are the natural solution to the problems we face in compliance,” said Julian Schibberges, Managing Director of the Bernstein Group.

Tough compliance problems require a look not just at particular people or businesses but at the larger network around them. Consulting with KERBEROS Compliance, Julian Schibberges has seen first hand that a suspicion that something is shady can be verified once you see the larger graph of connections.

In this week’s five-minute interview (conducted at GraphConnect 2018 in NYC), we spoke with Julian Schibberges about why he feels that graph databases like Neo4j are the future for the emerging field of RegTech.

What made you choose Neo4j?

Julian Schibberges: I think the reason we chose Neo4j was that we felt that Neo4j was at the head of the pack when it came to graph databases. We felt that Neo4j was a good fit and we also believed in Neo4j because it was a company that started with graph databases.

A lot of other companies and projects projects they come from a different field and then move onto graph databases. Neo4j started with graphs so we felt that they understood the idea behind it.

What have been some of your most interesting or surprising results you’d had while using Neo4j?

When I look at a project, I don’t always look at it from a very technical perspective. I look at it from the perspective of domain expertise. Neo4j supported us in looking at very complex networks and having an aha experience when looking at them.

Before we couldn’t see very complex structures and connections at the fourth or fifth level. Neo4j enables us to see beyond the immediate customer or the immediate franchise we need to verify to their larger network.

For us it was a very rewarding experience after we got the prototype running to have this kind of view and actually see, okay, there is something there. We kind of knew there was. We couldn’t really prove it, but then we were actually able to see it.

What do you think is in store for the future of graphs?

Schibberges: The compliance industry is still very much a business. There are a lot of lawyers and technology does not play as strong a role as it could. I think that’s partly because many people don’t yet know about graph databases.

I think graph databases are the natural solution to many of the problems we face in compliance. We think about how companies and people relate to each other and the documents that verify them or publicly available information about them.

I think graph databases are a natural fit for compliance. I think we will see a lot of RegTech companies using graph databases in the coming years to solve those problems.