The ACAMS moneylaundering.com International Anti-money Laundering and Financial Crime Conference came to a close in early April. The conference focused on technology and innovations to prevent financial crimes including the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into anti-crime fintech.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Ken Blanco, director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, announced that the agency will be hiring an advisor to focus on technology and engagement with the private sector on financial crime compliance.
“We’ve been talking about reform for a long time,” said Blanco. “I don’t want to be catching up; we’re the U.S. and we need to be ahead of the game.”
According to Spencer Doak, director of policy on anti-money laundering compliance for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the “vast majority” of financial institutions have satisfactory anti-money laundering compliance programs. Financial investigations rely on this compliance activity data to pursue cases. Looking at 97 recent terrorism investigations, more than a quarter of the cases involved data reporting of suspicious activity from a bank.
While these programs have been successful at detecting terrorism and drug crimes, this financial data has to be constantly monitored and analyzed in a timely manner, sometimes leaving openings where less obvious crimes slip through. New innovations in AI can mitigate this risk, reduce manual mistakes, and increase compliance. AI makes connections across accounts, people, and transactions to detect suspicious activity that a single person could not.
AI is one of the most powerful tools banks have in combating financial crimes. These technologies have the ability to recognize risk profiles and connect relationships that may not be obvious. AI can reduce false positives by linking data from multiple platforms and cross-referencing information. Almost 98 percent of anti-money Laundering investigations are conducted on the result of a false positive.
A recent study by Pitney Bowes suggests that introducing AI to combat financial crimes has the power to reduce costly mistakes and create a secure financial environment. Learn more here.
