Supercharging anti-money-laundering investigations: Jennifer Arnold

Jennifer Arnold is the co-founder and CEO of Minerva, a regulation technology platform that improves the efficiency and efficacy of anti-money-laundering investigations. She said her mission is to help financial institutions and regulators combat money laundering, fraud and other financial crimes with innovative and scalable solutions.

Arnold says she envisions reengineering AML compliance, with a mission to end human trafficking and financial crime. With Minerva, Arnold has armed investigators with the necessary insights to identify risk. She said Minerva takes AML compliance beyond the basic checklists that so many financial institutions follow and that do little to deter criminals and instead provides a more in-depth and holistic approach to compliance.

As the company’s founder, she was instrumental in securing seed funding in 2021 and closing a Series A round at the end of 2022, led by FirstMark. Notable clients include Equifax, Coinbase and SBI Bank.

In the decade prior to co-founding Minerva, Arnold held consulting roles with BMO Financial Group and other banks where she focused on the development and delivery of AML programs. She has extensive experience in leading and delivering large-scale AML transformation projects, including operating model design, change management, strategy development and regulatory remediation.

“I’m continually learning about how to run a company and to build a business, but if I think back, my tenacity and curiosity, humility and humor made everything possible,” Arnold said. “Starting from zero is terrifying. But what we did have was a profound understanding of our customers from our own industry experience, and when we were unsure, I wasn’t too proud to go back and ask more questions to gain more clarity.”

Nearly 40% of Minerva employees are female, while women make up half the C-suite and people of color comprise nearly half the staff, according to Arnold.