Introduction
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Bulgaria and Monaco from its grey list on 30 October 2026. The decision came at the Paris plenary, the first chaired by FATF President Giles Thomson. No new countries were added, so the list fell from 22 to 18 jurisdictions.
For Africa, this is the latest step in a fast-moving cleanup. Nigeria, South Africa, Mozambique and Burkina Faso exited in October 2025. Algeria and Namibia followed in June 2026. Côte d'Ivoire and the DRC are now out too.
Yet a delisting is not a clean bill of health for every customer from that country. For banks, fintechs, payment companies and gaming operators, the real question is what changes in their risk models on Monday morning. This article explains what FATF decided, why both African countries qualified, and how compliance teams should respond.
What is the FATF grey list?
The FATF grey list is the public list of countries under increased monitoring. These countries have strategic weaknesses in anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CFT) and counter-proliferation financing controls. Each has committed to a time-bound action plan with FATF to fix those gaps. Removal follows only after FATF verifies progress through an on-site visit.
What FATF Decided at the October 2026 Plenary
The plenary ran from 28 to 30 October 2026 in Paris. It was the first held under the United Kingdom's two-year FATF presidency, which began on 1 July 2026.
Four jurisdictions left the grey list after successful on-site visits. Monaco had been listed since June 2024 and Bulgaria since October 2023. Côte d'Ivoire joined in October 2024, and the DRC in October 2022. Vietnam stayed on the list, with FATF pressing it to speed up reforms.
The blacklist, formally the list of high-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action, did not change. It still covers Iran, North Korea and Myanmar.
The plenary also approved a new report on illicit money flows linked to scam compounds. FATF said it will publish the report in the week after the plenary. That makes it a document every fraud and AML team should read on release.
Why Côte d'Ivoire and the DRC Exited the Grey List
Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire was grey-listed in October 2024, about 16 months after its mutual evaluation report was adopted in June 2023. FATF asked it to make better use of international cooperation in money laundering and terrorist financing cases. It also had to improve risk-based supervision of financial institutions and designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs).
In February 2026, FATF still wanted proof of a sustained rise in money laundering investigations and prosecutions. By June 2026, FATF judged the action plan substantially complete and approved an on-site visit. That visit confirmed reforms were being implemented, which cleared the way for October's removal.
The work involved the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA). It also leaned on CENTIF, Côte d'Ivoire's financial intelligence unit (FIU). GIABA even held its plenary in Abidjan in May 2026, a visible signal of political commitment.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The DRC spent four years on the grey list, from October 2022 to October 2026. Its finance minister said removal should cut the cost and friction of cross-border payments. He also expects it to support correspondent banking relationships for Congolese banks.
That point matters for anyone moving money into Central Africa. Correspondent banks often apply heavier checks, or exit relationships entirely, when a country is grey-listed. Delisting gives those banks a reason to reopen or expand corridors.
Where Africa stands now
With these exits, the African countries still under increased monitoring are Angola, Cameroon, Kenya and South Sudan. [Editor: confirm against the official FATF list before publishing.] The trend is clear, though. At least ten African countries have left the list since mid-2025.
What Delisting Changes, and What It Does Not
Delisting changes how the world prices a country's risk. It does not change the risk of any single customer.
On the positive side, removal usually eases correspondent banking, lowers transaction costs and improves investor confidence. Global banks that applied blanket enhanced due diligence (EDD) to Ivorian or Congolese flows may now relax those rules. That can speed up onboarding and cut payment delays across West and Central Africa.
What stays the same is the underlying exposure. Corruption, informal cash economies, cross-border trade fraud and mineral-linked financial crime do not vanish after a plenary vote. Even Monaco's government described its own exit as a beginning, not a finish line.
Regional and national lists also move on their own timelines. The European Union (EU), for example, maintains its own high-risk third-country list. It added Côte d'Ivoire to that list in 2025, and EU removal requires a separate legal act. A Nigerian bank serving EU counterparties may still face questions about Ivorian exposure until that happens.
The practical answer is a risk-based one. Country risk should fall, but customer risk must still be earned through evidence.
How Compliance Teams Should Respond
Start with your country risk matrix. Move Côte d'Ivoire and the DRC out of any rule triggered purely by FATF grey-list status. Then re-score both countries using your other inputs, such as corruption indices, sanctions exposure and your own suspicious transaction data.
Next, review customers who were placed on enhanced due diligence because of nationality, residence or transaction corridor alone. Some can move to standard due diligence. Others carry independent red flags, such as politically exposed person (PEP) links, adverse media or unusual cash patterns. Those customers should stay on EDD regardless of the delisting.
After that, recalibrate transaction monitoring. Rules that flagged every payment to Abidjan or Kinshasa will now create noise without value. Replace them with behaviour-based scenarios, such as sudden volume spikes or rapid pass-through of funds. This keeps detection sharp while cutting false positives.
Document every change. Examiners will ask why a rule was relaxed, who approved it and what evidence supported the decision. A short memo citing the FATF statement and your re-scoring method protects the institution and the compliance officer.
Finally, watch the next plenary. FATF meets in February, June and October each year. Countries can be re-listed, and new African jurisdictions can be added. A one-off update is not enough; country risk needs a standing review cycle.
The Bigger Signal: FATF Is Turning Its Focus to Fraud
The grey-list exits made the headlines, but the scam compound report may matter more for African institutions. Scam compounds are industrial-scale fraud operations, often run with trafficked or coerced workers. They power romance scams, fake investment schemes and "pig butchering" fraud worldwide.
FATF has made fraud the centre of the UK presidency's 2026–2028 agenda. It estimates that scams caused nearly USD 500 billion in global losses across 2024 and 2025. Fraud was also identified as a major proceeds-generating crime in about 90% of its last round of mutual evaluations.
The direction is clear. Future FATF assessments are likely to ask how well countries and firms detect fraud proceeds, not just classic money laundering. For Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan and Ivorian institutions, that means fraud monitoring and AML monitoring can no longer sit in separate tools. Mule accounts, account takeovers and authorised push payment scams all leave money trails that AML teams must see.
How Youverify Helps Teams Adjust Without Losing Control
Every FATF update forces the same exercise: change country risk, re-screen customers, retune monitoring and prove it to an examiner. When those steps live in different tools, the evidence trail breaks. That is where findings come from.
Youverify runs the fraud and AML lifecycle on one governed record for each customer or business. When a country's risk rating changes, that change flows into customer risk scores, due diligence tiers and monitoring rules from one place. Vyra, Youverify's AI compliance agent, surfaces which customers are affected and shows the evidence behind each recommendation. A compliance officer still makes the final decision, and every step is logged for examination.
For teams across Africa, that means a grey-list update becomes a documented, defensible change rather than a scramble across spreadsheets. To learn more, book a free demo today.
Conclusion
Côte d'Ivoire and the DRC leaving the FATF grey list is good news for African finance. It should ease correspondent banking and cut friction across two important regional economies.
But delisting is a reason to recalibrate, not relax. Lower country risk does not lower the risk of a mule network or a corrupt counterparty. Meanwhile, FATF's new focus on scam compounds raises the bar for fraud detection everywhere.
The institutions that benefit most will be those that update their risk models quickly, keep evidence for every decision and treat fraud and AML as one problem.
About the Author
Victoria Okere is a compliance content writer at Youverify, specializing in AML compliance, financial crime risk, regulatory technology, and emerging trends in financial services.
