Financial crimes in on the rise in every institution. Criminals use legitimate systems like banks and insurance firms to convert their illegally obtained funds into legitimate money. Criminals hide their source of funds as well as their identities to bypass the customer verification process. After this, they carry out malicious activities like drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorist attacks, and other organized crimes.
Financial institutions need to employ robust AML solutions to identify criminals in the first place. The AI-powered AML solutions help financial institutions to verify customers and cross-match their identities against global sanction lists. They can also perform ongoing monitoring to prevent unforeseen threats. This blog sheds light on the AI and ML-driven ways to better AML compliance.
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AI and ML-Powered AML Verification – Enhancing Methods for Better Compliance
Keeping in view the skyrocketing money laundering cases, regulatory authorities are enforcing stringent regulations. As per these standards, financial institutions should verify customers while performing risk assessments prior to their registration. On the contrary, criminals are using sophisticated ways to dodge these checks. This ultimately drives financial firms towards failure with Anti Money Laundering (AML) regulations.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)-powered solutions provide efficiency to financial firms’ AML programs. AI verifies customers in real-time by requiring the end-users to submit their selfies. Similarly, ML screens and validates documents and is capable of accessing huge datasets. This way financial institutions like banks, insurance firms, and other industries can onboard legitimate customers. The ever-evolving digital solutions further provide the following benefits.
Detects Alterations in Customers’ Behavior
Where AI verifies customers by analysing their facial features and liveness, ML detects changes in their behaviour. Furthermore, technology-driven solutions monitor the transactions and specify the ones exceeding the threshold. Regulatory authorities like FATF have set some transaction limits varying on the region. If any transaction exceeds this limit, there might be suspiciousness.
Therefore, financial institutions should keep track of activities and report such suspiciousness to regulatory authorities. The traditional methods are not capable of identifying these suspicious activities. Financial institutions require robust AML monitoring solutions to stay a step ahead of criminals.
Reduces the Chances of Discrepancies
AI and ML-driven AML checks also help financial institutions to reduce the chances of false positives. They transform the operations and detect the false alerts in minimal time. This helps to reduce the chances of fraudulent attempts. These technologies identify the sources that trigger redundant data, carry out statistical analysis of customers’ information, and identify risk-possessed entities.
Moving on, the AI and ML-driven services register customers by scanning their documents which eliminates the chances of discrepancies. Traditional methods are prone to human errors which can cause inaccuracy within the information. Shufti Pro Funding indicates that financial institutions should employ digital solutions to eliminate the chances of any inaccuracies.
Enhanced Due Diligence
AI and ML technologies are the game changers in the identity verification niche because they are bringing constant innovations. For instance, risk assessment of customers at the time of registration. This helps financial institutions to identify the customers that possess the risk of money laundering. The digital AML screening solutions enable financial firms to access global databases. They can further cross-match customers against Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and other sanction lists.
Active Prevention of Financial Crimes
Criminals are using digitally advanced methods to dodge the verification at the stage of digital onboarding. As per Shufti Pro News, they hide their source of funds and forge documents to pass through the restrictions. However, with improved AI and ML-driven solutions, criminals may see a tough time.
These solutions verify customers by asking for a real-time selfie, original documents, and proof of address. The system then validates the information and cross-match customers against sanctions and blacklists. Hence, banks, insurance firms, and other institutions can readily address fraudulent activities.
Better Compliance with Regulations
Authorities like FATF, AUSTRAC, FinTECH, and FINTRAC are continuously monitoring financial institutions and enforcing laws accordingly. For instance, the EU put forth 6AMLD after 5AMLD with some changes to address the present concerns. If banks, insurance firms, and every other money-related industry fail to comply with these standards, they will face hefty fines. Therefore, these institutions need to incorporate better and improved AI and ML technologies to minimise these extreme consequences.
Uplifts Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the prime concern for any sector. Similarly, banks and other financial institutions also see customer retention as their prime responsibility. For this, they need to incorporate solutions that not only provide security to customers’ data but also eliminate chances of external breaches.
In Conclusion
AML solutions are providing financial institutions with global coverage to identify customers and assess the risk they possess. Financial firms won’t have to hire manual verifiers as the easy-to-integrate digital solutions provide enough accuracy. These further help in monitoring the customers and evaluating their behaviours. Ultimately, financial firms can mitigate the chances of criminal threats in time and report them directly to the authorities.
