African institutions are being sold off-the-shelf solutions at prices set for larger markets — for problems that require African answers.
That is why Novis exists. Not to resell a global platform with an African logo, but to build the infrastructure — from first principles — that regulated institutions on this continent actually need.
The pressure is real. The solutions on offer were not built for it.
African financial institutions are under active regulatory pressure — FATF grey-listing, central bank AI circulars, data protection legislation, and examination cycles that now include explicit questions about how automated compliance decisions are made. The pressure is not theoretical. It has board-level consequences and criminal liability attached to it.
The global compliance vendors who showed up in response quoted prices that assumed a European institution's budget, a European data population, and a European regulatory context. None of those assumptions hold. The result: institutions that needed real infrastructure were either priced out, or deployed platforms calibrated to markets that look nothing like theirs — and paid for it in false positive rates, failed audits, and regulator questions they could not answer.
Novis was founded to close that gap. Regulatory-grade infrastructure, built for how African institutions actually operate, priced for the market they're in.
One company. Two expressions of the same thesis.
Novis Intelligence Platform
A productised compliance infrastructure platform — AML transaction monitoring, STR/CTR workflow, case management, and rules engine — built modular, API-first, and calibrated to African regulatory requirements from the ground up.
- 21 African-calibrated detection rules across insurance, banking, mobile money, and SACCO sectors
- Automated STR/CTR generation with POCAMLA S.12 compliance and FRC submission workflow
- Explainable scoring — every decision traceable to the rule, threshold, and data point that triggered it
- On-premises or regional cloud deployment — data stays in-country
Bespoke AI Engineering
For institutions whose risk profile, regulatory obligations, or operational complexity outgrows what any product can offer. Foundry designs and builds custom AI systems — detection models, predictive models, LLM-powered workflows — and engineers the governance architecture that makes them defensible under the frameworks that apply.
- Custom model design calibrated to your data population, your sector, and your regulatory environment
- Infrastructure architecture across on-premises, hybrid, and private cloud deployments
- Provider-agnostic: OpenAI, Anthropic, Llama, Mistral, Qwen — chosen by what the use case and regulator permits
- Engagement-based: Discovery → Architecture → Build → Validation → Deployment → Retained support
The platform is the productised expression of the thesis. Foundry is what happens when the institution's needs exceed it. Both exist because the same gap — between what the market offers and what the regulatory environment actually requires — shows up at different scales.
Four principles. Not values on a wall.
African-first, always
We do not adapt global solutions to the African market. We build from here — from the data populations, the regulatory frameworks, the core banking infrastructure, and the operational realities of institutions that operate on this continent. Every assumption we make starts local.
Precision over coverage
A compliance system that explains every decision it makes is worth more than one that flags everything and lets analysts sort it out. We engineer for precision: lower false positive rates, decision traceability, and outputs a regulator or audit committee can actually read.
Your institution owns its intelligence
The models trained on your data, the typologies calibrated to your transaction patterns, the documentation produced for your regulators — all of it belongs to you. No vendor lock-in, no black box, no dependency on a platform you do not control.
Long-term partnership, not project delivery
We do not hand off a system and disappear. Regulatory environments change, examiners ask new questions, models drift. We stay in the engagement — with retained support, documented handovers, and the institutional memory of what we built together.
Kenya first. East Africa next. Pan-Africa by design.
We are not spread thin. We are building depth in one market before moving to the next — because regulatory infrastructure that works requires deep local knowledge, not surface-level presence.
Kenya
LivePrimary market. Insurance sector first engagement. POCAMLA, IRA, and FRC regulatory coverage. FATF assessment context: Kenya 2026 deadline.
East Africa
NextUganda (FIA), Tanzania (MEFMI), Rwanda (FIU). Shared FATF Mutual Evaluation cycle. Expanding with existing client networks.
Pan-Africa
RoadmapNigeria (NFIU/NDPR), South Africa (FIC/POPIA), broader continent expansion as regulatory coverage deepens.
Nairobi, Kenya
If you are building or buying compliance infrastructure in Africa, we should talk.
Whether you need the platform, a Foundry engagement, or just an honest conversation about what your regulatory situation actually requires — we are here for it.
or reach us at hello@novisintel.com