Our story

A report on Pakistan

In 2006, after decades spent in the finance industry, Gary decided to burn his suits and live a quiet family life away from the office. A client had once asked him for a risk report on Pakistan: something specific and enough to base a real decision on. He looked for the sources. Government publications in one place, NGO data in another, regulatory guidance scattered across sites with no common format. No single source covered all of it and he realised compliance teams needed something solid they could point to when a decision got questioned.

That gave him the idea of building a website that could provide that information on a country-by-country basis.

Grown, not funded

There was no investor round. Gary built the original website on the basic Yahoo Sitebuilder, and wrote the early reports one country at a time, sourced from primary documents. People used them, trusted them and told colleagues. Over the last 20 years, the business has grown and we now have over 20,000 unique visitors to our website each month.

Key milestones

• The first reports went out as PDFs, one at a time. As demand grew, KnowYourCountry moved to a subscription platform so the data could stay current instead of going stale after publication.
• In 2012, the FATF made jurisdictional AML risk assessments a global mandate. KnowYourCountry had already been delivering this vital data since 2006, positioning us as a trusted pioneer.
• SafeLink joined in 2018, adding screening capability to the platform.
• Deloitte became a partner in 2024, putting one of the industry's largest firms behind our operations.
• In 2025 Josh joined as CTO, adding API access and redesigning the interface.
• In 2026 we added new risk categories to our methodology, including proliferation financing, in line with global regulatory frameworks. 

What guides the work

Trafficking, corruption and organised crime generate proceeds that criminals need to launder. Assessing where that risk is highest starts with the underlying data and it has to be sourced properly, current, and built around a firm’s own risk model. 

Every report is built from primary sources across 17 risk categories, from corruption and sanctions to beneficial ownership and offshore finance. We use AI to process that volume of material, with every output reviewed by subject matter experts before publication.

What's next

We are constantly evolving with the ever-changing regulatory landscape. Next up: remittance corridors data, industry information, and bespoke reports.

The goal hasn't changed since 2006: to be the first place compliance teams check to get the full picture on jurisdictional AML risk.