How AI could help stamp out financial crime — or help accelerate it
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Last week, I swam in the acronym-infested waters of the compliance industry at a conference hosted by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists. I was most struck by new artificial intelligence products on display there. One “reg tech” company — SymphonyAI — demonstrated a program that could basically replace much of financial institutions’ compliance departments with something as easy to use as a Gmail account.
It spots anomalies in financial transactions, spells out why they’re anomalous and writes it all up in straightforward prose, which can be translated into multiple languages, ready to be emailed to your regulator. You can chat with it (“Show me the risky transactions”), ask it questions (“Which transactions involved China?”) and give it feedback, so it learns to tailor its advice to your particular needs. A lot of the focus on AI this year has been to mock it for falling in love with a New York Times journalist or to worry that it might be “sentient,” but this was the first time I’d personally witnessed its human-replacing capabilities.
Another company — Quantexa — has remarkable software that maps companies, their shareholders and directors, financial transactions and other information in clear and easily comprehensible ways, thus negating the kinds of obfuscation used by criminals to hide their transactions. It is remarkable to think this is just the beginning of what AI can do.
Several banks have already adopted versions of AI — including HSBC and ING — in their quest to improve their compliance with anti-money laundering rules after their well-publicized failures to do so.