Alert debt:the liability that never shows up on the balance sheet

 

Ask a bank CEO what an analyst costs and you'll get a number in seconds. Ask how many alerts are open right now, and how old the oldest one is, and see how long the answer takes.

That second number is a liability. It just doesn't sit on the balance sheet, so nobody prices it.

I call it alert debt: the open, ageing alerts and reviews your controls created and your team hasn't worked yet. Like any debt, it's fine in small amounts and dangerous once it compounds. And it compounds quietly, because every alert that ages makes the next one look normal.

Here's what the interest looks like when a regulator collects it.

In Ireland, the Central Bank found that faults in the configuration of Coinbase Europe's transaction monitoring system left 30,442,437 transactions, about 31% of its transactions in that period and worth over €176 billion, not properly monitored over 12 months. Strictly, that's monitoring that never ran rather than alerts sitting in a queue. The accounting is the same. Completing the monitoring took almost three years and led to 2,708 suspicious transaction reports to the FIU. Then came a €21,464,734 fine, confirmed by the High Court in January.

In the UK, the FCA's Final Notice to Starling Bank describes a customer base that grew from about 43,000 in 2017 to about 3.6 million in 2023, with financial crime controls that "failed to keep pace with its growth." When the bank raised its own financial crime risk rating to red in late 2022, the notice records a backlog of high-risk customer reviews and customer screening alerts as part of the picture. The penalty was £28,959,426.

I read both notices the same way. Volume grew faster than the system built to work it. That's a growth decision, and growth decisions sit with the CEO.

In the UAE, the bill can also carry a person's name. In June, CBUAE fined a foreign bank's branch AED 20 million for "significant, repeated failures" in its AML, CFT and sanctions framework, and fined its Head of Compliance and MLRO AED 300,000. The release doesn't mention a backlog, and I'm not claiming one. My point is narrower. If your MLRO is carrying a queue the business never funded, you've moved firm risk onto one person and booked it as a saving.

My line in the sand: alert backlog belongs in the board pack every month, reported by age. Count shows how busy the team is. Age shows what you owe.

More analysts aren't automatically the fix, and next Wednesday's issue is about exactly that. The fix starts with seeing the debt. At FluxForce, our AI agents investigate each alert and prepare the case, so your analysts make the call faster and every decision leaves evidence an examiner can replay.

Does your board see alert backlog by age, or not at all?

Sources

• Central Bank of Ireland, enforcement action against Coinbase Europe Limited, 6 November 2025: press release
• FCA, Final Notice to Starling Bank Limited, 27 September 2024: final notice (PDF

Before you question an employee’s performance, look at the stability around them.

 

Early in my career, I joined an NBFC.

Within a few months, my manager changed. Then my role changed. Then my manager changed again.

Every couple of months, I was adjusting to a new manager, a new role and new expectations.

At the time of my confirmation, feedback was sought from a manager who had worked with me for only two months. He wanted feedback from my previous two managers, but both had already left.

I left the organisation after nine months.

We expect employees to be stable, but rarely ask whether management has given them the stability to perform.

When the manager, role and expectations keep changing, it becomes difficult to build consistency in performance.

Before questioning an employee's performance, ask:

Have we given them enough stability to perform?

Because performance isn't created by the employee alone.

The manager, the role, the expectations and the consistency around them matter just as much.

SB Growth Partners

People. Talent. Growth.

Why Did an EdTech Startup Need a Replacement Before Probation?

 

I was working with an EdTech startup in Gurugram when the founder asked for a replacement for a candidate who had completed only 2.5 months.

My first thought was not, “Who should we hire next?”

It was:

“Why didn't this hire work?”

Because if we don't understand that, we may make the same mistake again.

Before your next hire, ask yourself:

1. Is the role clear? Does the person know what they are expected to deliver?

2. Is the manager clear? Do both agree on what good performance looks like?

3. Is the first 90 days clear? Are the expectations defined from the start?

4. Are performance issues discussed early? Or only when replacement becomes the answer?

5. If this person leaves, what will you change? The hiring criteria, role, onboarding or management?

Score yourself

5/5 — Good foundation 3–4 — Look at the gaps 0–2 — Fix the basics before hiring again

But the score isn't the most important part.

Ask yourself:

If I had to replace this person tomorrow, would I hire differentlyor just hire again?

A replacement fills the vacancy.

It doesn't tell you why the vacancy happened.

If you're dealing with a similar hiring or people challenge, happy to compare notes.

SOMETIMES, PROMOTING YOUR BEST PERFORMER CAN TRIGGER MORE ATTRITION THAN YOU EXPECT.

 

 

A very good individual contributor was promoted to Manager in less than a year in one of the Engineering Company

She was technically strong and consistently delivered.

A few months later, she wanted to resign.

And she wanted her team to leave with her.

That was the real problem.

Don't assume that your best individual contributor is automatically ready to manage people.

Managing people was a different job altogether.

She now had to delegate, manage former peers, handle conflicts, give feedback and take responsibility for the team's performance.

And don't stop paying attention once the promotion is made.

The first few months matter.

Talk to the manager. Talk to the team. Look for friction. Give the new manager support.

Because by the time people start resigning, the problem may have been there for months.

Before promoting your next star performer, ask:

Are we promoting them because they are good at their current job, or because they are ready for the next one?

Have you ever promoted a high performer into management and seen unexpected changes in the team?

What happened? I’d love to hear your experience

The Founder’s Growth Playbook | Edition #8

SB Growth Partners

People. Talent. Growth.

 

“We’re Only 50 Employees. Why Do We Need POSH?”

 

I came across this situation at a CA firm.

Around 50 employees. Nearly 10 years in business.

POSH compliance was still being considered an unnecessary cost.

Then a woman employee raised a concern about a senior team member who had offered her a lift on a rainy day.

Offering a lift, by itself, does not establish sexual harassment.

But the firm had another problem:

There was no formal process to deal with the complaint.

No properly constituted Internal Committee. No clear channel. No defined process.

The matter escalated. The employee started saying she would approach the police.

This is where the cost-cutting decision became a bigger problem.

A complaint doesn't automatically mean harassment.

But when someone raises a sensitive concern, the organisation needs a process to hear it, examine the facts and respond appropriately.

For workplaces with 10 or more employees, the POSH Act requires an Internal Committee.

So the argument:

“We have only 50 employees. We're too small for POSH.”

doesn't hold.

50 employees may be a small organisation. It isn't below the legal threshold.

And more importantly, you don't create the process after a complaint arrives.

Have the process ready before you need it.People & Organisation Advisory

Details have been anonymised to protect confidentiality. This is a general HR perspective, not legal advice.

Your next senior hire will fail in 6 months unless you fix these 4 things before day 1.

 

 

If you run a 30 to 200 person company, you've probably done this: hired a senior leader to "take this off my plate." Four to six months later, they left, or you let them go.

Most founders blame the hire. In my experience, the problem is usually what they walked into.

This matters more now. Poaching and lateral hiring are expected to continue for leadership and niche talent. Replacing a leader is slower and costlier than keeping one.

1. Decision rights Make three columns: what they decide alone, what they decide and inform you about, and what needs your approval. Put ₹ limits on each.

2. A scorecard, not a JD A JD lists tasks. A scorecard lists 3 to 5 outcomes for the first 12 months, with numbers. "Reduce sales cycle from [60] to [45] days" is a scorecard line.

3. Team handover Tell the team, in your words, that they report to the new leader now. Then stop answering their questions about decisions the leader owns. Redirect every time.

4. A 90-day plan Day 30: understand and listen. Day 60: first changes. Day 90: first results. Hold a weekly 30-minute 1:1 with you, with the agenda set by them.

Questions founders ask me

"What if I don't trust them yet?" Start with a ₹ limit and raise it every 30 days as they deliver.

"Should I hire from a big company?" Only if they've built something at your size. Big-company leaders often expect systems you don't have yet.

"How do I know early that it's failing?" Three signals by day 45: the team still comes to you, the leader asks permission for things they own, and their key metric hasn't moved.

"I've already been hired and it's going wrong. Replace them?" Not yet. Run these 4 checks first. Usually one is missing.

Next step: If you're about to hire or replace a senior leader, book a 30-minute Leadership Systems Diagnostic Call. We'll map which of these 4 are missing in your company. Calendly

 

My Automation Emailed The Wrong Address.

 

You turned on something that sends email for you. It says sent, and you believe it, because there is a tick next to the word.

Mine said sent last week. The message went out from an address the client had never written to, so it landed outside the thread we were already in.

The client saw a stranger. My system saw silence. Then it chased them again.

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WHAT WORKS

Find the blanks nobody filled in.

Every automation you switch on has a list of questions it has to answer before it can act. Some of them you answered during setup. The rest it answers for you, quietly, out of your defaults, and it never mentions which ones those were.

Mine had two email accounts connected. Nothing ever asked me which one a reply should leave from, so it used the one I use most. The client had written to the other one.

Here is the part worth understanding. That is not a glitch. A glitch is occasional. A default applied to the wrong record is wrong every single time that record comes up, and it is confidently wrong, and it looks exactly like working.

Sent is a claim about your outbox. It is not a claim about the conversation.

The blanks are always the same handful. For anything that sends on your behalf:

- Which address it sends from, when you have more than one.

- Which name and signature ride on it.

- What time "9am" means when the recipient is in another country.

- Who it replies to when three people are on the thread.

- What it does when it is unsure. Skip, guess, or come and ask you.

For each of those, ask one question: does it read the answer off the thing it is acting on, or off your settings?

Off the thing it is acting on is correct. That client, that conversation, that invoice. Off your settings is a coin flip that lands the same way forever, and the day your work stops being uniform is the day it starts being wrong without telling you.

Then do the arithmetic, because it is worse than it sounds. Two connected accounts and one default is not a small error rate. Every conversation living on the second account is handled wrong, permanently, and none of it shows up as a failure. It shows up as clients who went quiet.

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Below is the receipt test I run now. Four things to look at in the recipient's mailbox, and a fifth check that catches what those four miss. (Go visit the link below to see)

Read the rest of this issue on our website: https://ankushchauhan.com/what-works/automation-emailed-wrong-address

The automation in this story is mine. It is called Alacrio, it runs my client follow-ups, and since this happened it shows me the account, the thread and the decision before anything leaves.