MVB Bank is partnering with Kobalt Labs to automate risk assessments and compliance workflows across its fintech partnerships, targeting due diligence, ongoing monitoring and marketing compliance. The deployment adds AI-driven oversight to a banking platform supporting payments, card issuance, lending and embedded-finance programs.

MVB Bank is turning to AI to manage the compliance burden associated with its growing fintech business, partnering with Kobalt Labs to automate risk assessments, due diligence and ongoing oversight of fintech partners.

The agreement puts Kobalt’s AI-powered compliance platform into a bank that provides infrastructure for payments, card issuance, sponsorship lending and online gaming programs while also operating traditional retail and commercial banking businesses.

For MVB, the objective is not simply to automate individual compliance tasks. The bank wants to create a more consistent process for evaluating and monitoring fintech relationships while improving the experience for partners navigating its onboarding and oversight processes.

Kobalt’s platform is designed to automate workflows covering fintech partner collaboration, due diligence, ongoing monitoring and marketing compliance. It can review vendor and fintech partner information, analyze policies and procedures against regulatory expectations, and assist with security and marketing compliance assessments.

The technology addresses a growing operational challenge for banks that serve as regulated infrastructure providers to fintech companies. Every new partner can introduce additional obligations involving third-party risk, consumer protection, information security, compliance controls and ongoing monitoring.

Those requirements can become particularly difficult to manage when reviews depend heavily on manual document analysis and processes vary between teams or individual relationships.

Kobalt’s approach is to use AI to standardize parts of that work. The company says its platform helps banks produce risk assessments more quickly and consistently, while creating documentation that can provide a clearer record of how decisions were reached.

That auditability is important in regulated financial services. AI can accelerate the analysis of policies, procedures and supporting documentation, but banks remain responsible for determining whether their partners and activities satisfy applicable regulatory requirements. The technology therefore functions as compliance infrastructure rather than a substitute for the bank’s risk-management organization.

MVB’s fintech business makes the use case particularly relevant. The bank provides money-movement services across multiple payment modalities and offers embedded-finance capabilities to fintech companies. Its platform combines banking infrastructure, regulatory expertise and fintech development capabilities to help partners launch financial products.

That business model effectively makes third-party risk management part of the bank’s product infrastructure. As the number of fintech relationships increases, the ability to assess partners consistently can affect how quickly new programs are launched and how efficiently existing programs are monitored.

The partnership also comes as banks face pressure to strengthen oversight of third-party relationships while controlling operating costs. Manual compliance processes can require specialists to repeatedly review similar documentation, track follow-up requirements and update assessments as relationships evolve.

AI-based compliance platforms are increasingly targeting those repetitive processes. Kobalt says its system can support vendor and fintech reviews and assess policies and procedures against changing regulatory expectations.

The company counts financial institutions and fintechs including Chime, Upstart, Zions Bancorp, Emprise Bank, Core Bank and Meriwest Credit Union among its customers. Those customer references are company-reported and do not independently establish the effectiveness of the platform.

For MVB, the potential benefit extends beyond efficiency. A standardized workflow can help create a consistent methodology for partner reviews, reducing variation between assessments and making it easier for compliance teams to identify missing evidence or unresolved risks.

That is particularly important for banks operating across several fintech categories. Payments, card programs, lending and other embedded-finance products can each introduce different regulatory and operational considerations. A common risk platform can provide a shared layer across those programs while allowing individual assessments to account for product-specific requirements.

The competitive landscape includes traditional governance, risk and compliance software, third-party risk-management platforms and newer AI-native regtech products. The distinction increasingly lies in how much of the underlying review process a platform can automate while retaining the evidence, controls and human oversight required by regulated institutions.

Kobalt’s positioning is explicitly AI-first. CEO and cofounder Kalyani Ramadurgam argues that technology is necessary for banks seeking to demonstrate consistent and scalable compliance processes to regulators.

MVB’s leadership similarly frames the partnership as part of its broader technology strategy. The bank says it is looking for fintech companies that can improve operational capabilities while maintaining effective risk oversight and regulatory compliance.

Klaros Group introduced the two companies and is advising on the relationship. The regulatory consulting firm says third-party risk management is an area where banks face pressure to accomplish more work faster and with greater consistency.

The combination of regulatory consulting and AI automation points to an emerging model for bank compliance. Software can handle document-intensive and repetitive analysis, while specialized regulatory expertise can help institutions interpret requirements and design controls around the technology.

For fintech infrastructure banks, that combination could become increasingly important. The competitive advantage of embedded finance depends not only on payment rails, accounts or card infrastructure, but also on whether a regulated bank can onboard and supervise partners efficiently.

MVB’s Kobalt deployment therefore illustrates a broader shift in banking technology and RegTech: compliance is increasingly being treated as a scalable technology layer supporting fintech growth.

If AI can reduce repetitive review work without compromising documentation, human judgment or regulatory accountability, banks may be able to support larger fintech ecosystems without expanding compliance operations at the same pace.

Market Landscape

AI-driven third-party risk management is emerging as an important layer of fintech infrastructure. Banks that provide payments, lending, card and embedded-finance services must oversee partners throughout their relationships, making onboarding only the beginning of the compliance process.

Traditional GRC systems generally organize workflows and documentation, while AI-native platforms are attempting to automate portions of analysis and assessment. The key competitive questions are whether these systems can produce reliable evidence, maintain consistent processes and integrate human review into regulated decision-making.

MVB’s deployment shows how compliance technology is becoming closely tied to the scalability of banking-as-a-service and embedded-finance programs. For banks serving multiple fintech categories, partner oversight can directly influence onboarding speed, operational costs and risk exposure.

Top Insights

• MVB Bank will use Kobalt AI to automate fintech partner due diligence, risk assessments, ongoing monitoring and marketing compliance workflows.
• The deployment adds AI-driven risk infrastructure to a bank supporting payments, card issuance, sponsorship lending and embedded-finance programs.
• Kobalt analyzes partner documentation, policies and procedures to help compliance teams produce more consistent and defensible risk assessments.
• The partnership highlights how third-party risk management is becoming a core technology requirement for banks scaling fintech relationships.
• Human oversight remains essential because AI automation can accelerate compliance analysis but does not transfer regulatory accountability away from the bank.

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