An eToro Alumnus Wants AI to Fold Every Rulebook into One Obligation

Avner Yoffe has stepped down as Head of Regtech Surveillance at eToro to build an AI startup targeting regulatory compliance. A veteran of more than a decade on the regulatory front lines, including an earlier stint at compliance reporting provider Cappitech, Yoffe is now a solo founder developing a system he says should let a financial institution satisfy an underlying regulatory duty once, no matter how many supervisors demand it.

Two flaws in how firms read the rulebook

Yoffe points to two recurring problems. The first is fragmentation: compliance sits in disconnected departments, with a Chief Information Security Officer handling the EU's DORA alongside commercial assurance frameworks such as SOC 2, a Chief Commercial Officer tracking cross-border tax reporting, and a Chief Compliance Officer operationalising conduct rules across products. Each buys bespoke tools and drafts separate policies. The second is an inability to recognise when enough is enough, so firms keep adding software, external advisers and manual checks without gaining certainty. He argues the drafting of modern rules aggravates this: MiFID II runs to thousands of pages yet relies on subjective terms such as "adequate", "appropriate" and the "best interests" of clients.

At the core of his venture is a standard he is developing called CLHEAR, an acronym for compliance, life cycle, harmonisation, efficiency, assurance and reliability. It is intended as an open data standard that ingests text from regulations, laws and standards and cross-references it against commercial activities — for example, consolidating obligations to prevent insider trading or market abuse that appear in nearly every developed market into one requirement. Output would be translated into building blocks covering documents, apps, roles, procedures and their links, with provenance back to the source texts, delivered through a single conversational interface.

A minimum viable product is scheduled for the end of 2026 and will include the AI interface based on CLHEAR; conversational AI is a later goal. Yoffe plans to target traditional commercial banks first, betting that winning a tier-one risk committee will bring the broader market. He is also calling for participants to help form a best-in-class advisory board.

The wider industry is shifting in a similar direction. Kraken and Crypto.com have recently installed regulation specialists to lead their MiFID operations, while Revolut has onboarded a risk expert to run its Cyprus-based crypto unit. Yoffe also cites Y Combinator data showing AI regtech as one of its fastest-growing categories between 2024 and 2026, alongside Bretton AI's $75M Series B for agents automating AML, KYC and sanctions reviews. He acknowledges the leap of founding solo and says he is weighing an early investment against bootstrapping.