Anti-Money Laundering Technology Partner: Exiger Tech

Over the past five years, the number of consumers chosing digital means of payment has risen exponentially. As a result, financial institutions are having to upgrade old legacy systems or integrate new forms of technology to keep pace with demand.

Regulatory and law enforcement scrutiny of money laundering is at an all-time high. Central banks and other financial regulators now expect those they supervise to take the necessary steps to prevent their systems from being used to facilitate financial crime.

The combination of the ease with which funds can be moved around the world, and the lack of transparency of the holders of bank accounts, however, has created challenges. “While there is no silver bullet solution, it has become clear that those of us fighting financial crime must further integrate our data and technology to paint a truer, more complete picture of risk,” says Brendan Galla, president of Exiger Tech.

Exiger, a US-based RegTech and risk intelligence company, has been providing financial firms and regulators with global governance, risk and compliance solutions to identify and manage financial crime at scale.

“Our solutions align with central banks’ mission by utilising artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled data analytics to identify high-risk indicators with greater accuracy and coverage through a transparent AI-driven decision-making process,” says Galla.

A regulator in an advanced Asian economy has recently become one of Exiger’s latest clients. It needed to “mature its approach to identifying and assessing anti-money laundering risk, anti-bribery and corruption risk, reputational risk, and environmental, social and governance issues”, explains Galla. Prior to adopting Exiger’s platform, the regulator had been conducting its due diligence manually, which was costly, slow and prone to inaccuracies.

The regulator noticed there was scope to automate many of its processes and began reviewing a sweep of providers. Exiger’s Insight 3PM and DDIQ were chosen by the regulator as they provided a more accurate and comprehensive picture of risk.

Their products could also be integrated with ease into the regulator’s existing compliance infrastructure and risk management framework.  In an assessment of solutions conducted by another leading Asian regulator, it was reported that Exiger “was sufficiently differentiated both in terms of higher matches and lower false positives”.

The DDIQ platform allows a regulator to look for financial crime compliance and reputational red flags using a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution. “There is no need for expensive implementations and maintenance of on-premise solutions with our tool,” says Galla.

The platform uses AI to read, understand and analyse content in more than 30 different languages, with the same approach and reasoning as a human, but without the constraints. It has been trained by Exiger’s veteran compliance and investigations professionals and is able to identify and monitor financial crime risk hidden in the open web, watchlists and news media. “All steps in the process are documented in an explainable and auditable way to meet the requirements of regulators and compliance departments,” says Galla.