ThetaRay names Santander veteran Luis Pinedo to strategic customers role

ThetaRay has appointed Luis Pinedo, formerly a senior compliance executive at Santander Bank, as chief strategic customers officer, expanding its leadership team as banks face tighter anti-money laundering scrutiny. The company said Pinedo will lead strategic customer engagement and help shape product strategy across its compliance platform.

Pinedo previously served as group vice president of compliance at Santander Bank, according to ThetaRay. During 16 years at the bank, he led global financial crime compliance transformation work across operating models, processes and technology platforms.

ThetaRay, which describes itself as a provider of AI infrastructure for financial crime compliance, said Pinedo’s role will connect the operational demands of large banks with product development and design. His remit covers the company’s platform for transaction monitoring, screening, customer risk assessment and agentic investigations.

Regulatory pressure frames the appointment

The company linked the hire to a period of heightened regulatory attention on financial crime controls. ThetaRay said regulators are scrutinising anti-money laundering practices while updating expectations for how institutions show that compliance programs work.

Among the examples cited by the company, FinCEN has announced a plan to assess programs based on effectiveness in 2026. ThetaRay also pointed to the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s integration of generative AI into internal supervisory workflows and the European Union’s AML Package, which will require member states to put ownership registry rules into effect under AMLD6.

Those changes raise the stakes for financial institutions that must show examiners how they identify, investigate and report suspicious activity. ThetaRay said its platform is intended to support an integrated approach across financial crime compliance functions rather than separate operational processes.

AI strategy and customer engagement

Pinedo said in the company announcement that financial crime compliance is at an inflection point after his years inside a global bank. He said traditional rules-based methods are no longer sufficient as regulators become more data-led, and he described large language model-based agents as an extension of ThetaRay’s work in AI.

“I joined ThetaRay because AI has been part of the company’s DNA for more than a decade,” Pinedo said. He added that he wants to help banks make the transition to AI-supported compliance “in a practical, scalable way.”

Brad Levy, ThetaRay’s chief executive, said technology used to address financial crime and regulatory effectiveness standards must be proven in production. He said Pinedo’s experience inside one of the world’s largest banking institutions would support the enterprise transformations ThetaRay says its clients need for global regulatory requirements.

Levy said ThetaRay’s AI infrastructure already monitors more than $20 trillion in transactions annually for leading financial institutions. The company did not provide additional details on the composition of those transactions or the number of institutions included in that figure.

ThetaRay said placing Pinedo in charge of strategic customer and product strategy reinforces its plan to deliver a cross-functional compliance platform and improve risk reporting for modern examiners.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.