Best Anti-Money Laundering Technology Provider: Thomson Reuters

A recent report by Thomson Reuters estimates that 47% of organisations have suffered at least one financial crime incident over the past 12 months, with the total aggregated loss amounting to $1.45 trillion – around 3.5% of their global turnover. No one appears to be immune and, as cyber attackers become more adept in their techniques, the threat of money laundering continues to grow.

Institutions are now digesting an increasing amount of information to help prevent financial crime, but processes can be slow, creating gaps in the framework. In 2014, Thomson Reuters launched its anti‑money laundering World-Check One solution for compliance professionals. The programme is aimed at simplifying the screening for money laundering, counterterrorist financing, sanctions, organised crime and threat finance.

It also provides detailed monitoring of politically exposed person relationships, enabling organisations to screen for a variety of compliance obligations and manage customer and third‑party risk. In recent years, Thomson Reuters has enhanced the programme with the launch of Media Check and Customer Risk Screener. Together, these systems are designed to help fight financial crime worldwide.

Media Check uses artificial intelligence to screen and process information from more than 11,000 print and web sources, aiding financial firms in complying with regulation while avoiding the reputational risk of missing critical information that could result in criminal activity. For this reason, Thomson Reuters has won Central Banking’s FinTech & RegTech Global Award for Best Anti-Money Laundering Technology Provider. 

As the world of financial crime continues to evolve, Thomson Reuters recognised the need to translate its tool into a more user‑friendly format. In March 2018, the company launched the Customer Risk Screener app, which integrates World‑Check data into Salesforce AppExchange. The World‑Check Customer Risk Screener works by connecting organisations’ customer data from Salesforce with Thomson Reuters’ proprietary World-Check risk intelligence. Clients can then easily embed and automate customer risk screening checks into their existing customer on‑boarding and monitoring work.

This integration with other platforms means Thomson Reuters’ customers will have an enhanced compliance workflow and the assurance that only relevant content is presented to their compliance teams. Media Check also provides continuous, up‑to‑date media and data monitoring.

Thomson Reuters is investing significant resources into improving World-Check and plans to improve its monitoring systems. Thomson Reuters aims to create a platform that the risk intelligence data industry can use to find connected and integrated critical financial crime datasets. It will also look to provide integrated analytics tools to allow clients to model and visualise data in new ways.

Read the full Central Banking FinTech RegTech Global Awards 2018 Winners In Focus report