How Save the Children uses AI to deliver critical humanitarian aid

Best use of AI in Corporate Treasury

Highly Commended Winner

Save the Children International

Photo of Asha Kumari, Saira Maniar and Sarah Wazen, Save the Children International, Anders Meinert Jørgensen, Avallone and Edward Collis, Save the Children International.

Saira Maniar

Senior Treasury Compliance and Crisis Funding Manager

United Kingdom

Save the Children International is a global non-profit headquartered in London, England, that operates in over 100 countries. Founded in 1919, the organisation focuses on improving children’s lives by providing emergency relief, healthcare, education and protection from harm.

in partnership with

The challenge

Before partnering with Avallone, Save the Children International (SCI) faced a treasury environment characterised by fragmented processes, manual workflows and limited real-time visibility over sharing KYC data with global banking partners.

Operating across multiple jurisdictions and dealing with a significant number of bank accounts, SCI’s treasury team spent substantial time on repetitive tasks such as data consolidation, account maintenance and compliance monitoring. The organisation’s rapid growth, coupled with increased focus on crisis funding needs and complex geo-political changes made these legacy methods unsustainable.

Manual processes created operational risk, delayed reporting and reduced the team’s ability to focus on strategic oversight. Additionally, SCI needed stronger controls and transparency to satisfy regulatory demands, banking relationships and internal governance expectations.

The solution

After exploring what was available, SCI selected Avallone’s AI enabled treasury platform to centralise, automate and future-proof its global banking management.

Avallone offered automated know your customer (KYC) workflows, real time screening, and intelligent document handling – all critical for a complex humanitarian organisation operating worldwide.

Implementation began with mapping SCI’s global profile landscape and integrating Avallone with existing internal systems. This created a single secured source of truth for account ownership, signatory management and documentation. AI-driven ingestion tools were used to digitise and interpret existing banking documents, significantly reducing manual data entry.

Change management was an important component of the rollout. SCI’s decentralised operating model required careful alignment across country offices and teams. Training sessions, iterative pilots and clear governance structures ensured a smooth transition. Some obstacles emerged, including inconsistent documentation formats across and varying degrees of digital readiness within banking partners. Avallone’s flexible AI models and SCI’s collaborative approach helped overcome these challenges. The implementation ultimately delivered a modern, secured, automated treasury infrastructure that supports SCI’s global mission and scales with future growth.

“Winning the Adam Smith Award for Best use of AI in Corporate Treasury for Save the Children International (SCI) is indeed a proud moment for me. Overall, it is a recognition of SCI treasury’s commitment to innovation, resilience and strong risk management. It validates our efforts to transform treasury compliance through AI and automation. Our partnership with Avallone has enabled us to respond more effectively to banking KYC/EDD requirements, strengthening relationships with our banking partners. This ultimately supports SCI’s mission and minimises delays to SCI payments allowing uninterrupted delivery of critical aid to children around the world.”

Saira Maniar, Senior Treasury Compliance and Crisis Funding Manager

Best practice and innovation

The judges commended the impressive solution for a truly global organisation, by reducing KYC lead times plus assuring prompt payment execution.

SCI and Avallone leveraged AI not as an add on, but as a core enabler of risk reduction, workflow standardisation and strategic visibility. Automating bank account management, KYC tracking and document processing introduced controls that are typically difficult to maintain across a large humanitarian network.

Innovation is demonstrated in Avallone’s use of AI to interpret and validate complex banking documentation, identify anomalies and maintain clean, compliant data. The platform applies best practice governance frameworks to account ownership, approval workflows and access rights – providing SCI with a global standard that can be applied consistently, regardless of country context.

Key benefits

Minimise delays to payments.
Strengthen relationships with banking partners.
Cost savings.
Process efficiencies.
Risk mitigation – part of treasury compliance framework.
Future-proof solution.
AI supported KYC processes.
Improved key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics.
Increased automation.
Manual intervention reduced.
Reduction in errors.
Avallone support team – unique in that they are also financial crime prevention experts.

The solution has fully delivered on SCI’s objectives of improved transparency, risk reduction and operational efficiency. By centralising all KYC and enhanced due diligence (EDD) and related documentation in a single secured AI-powered platform, SCI now has real-time visibility and stronger control over its global KYC processes. Automated processes have reduced manual workload dramatically, enabling treasury teams to focus on strategic decision-making rather than administrative tasks.

SCI has also seen a significant improvement in compliance readiness. AI-driven validation ensures that account data, KYC processes and information remains accurate and up to date. This has strengthened SCI’s KYC governance and reduced the risk of outdated KYC data, including errors or fragmented information.

Overall, the partnership with Avallone has enhanced SCI’s ability to manage global treasury compliance and further improved compliance relationships with SCI’s core banking partners resulting in a material reduction in delayed or blocked payments due to treasury compliance – supporting its mission to deliver critical humanitarian aid to reach more children in need more effectively.

Anders Meinert Jørgensen

CEO, Avallone

Save the Children International (SCI) has demonstrated how AI can be applied responsibly within treasury and compliance workflows to improve efficiency, transparency and control without compromising governance or human oversight. We are honoured that Avallone’s AI-powered platform and AML expertise have supported SCI in transforming KYC processes, strengthening relationships with banking partners and helping ensure reliable delivery of funds to programmes serving vulnerable children. This achievement demonstrates SCI’s commitment to modernising treasury operations and shows how strong collaboration and responsible AI can deliver meaningful operational and humanitarian impact. Congratulations on winning the inaugural Best use of AI in Corporate Treasury award!

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The Adam Smith Awards are the industry benchmark for best practice and innovation in corporate treasury. The 2026 awards attracted 635 nominations. To find out more please visit treasurytoday.com/adam-smith-awards

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