BAE Systems, Acuminor working on technology to help banks identify financial crimes

BAE Systems Applied Intelligence and Acuminor are developing new technology to help banks identify transactional behavior linked to human trafficking.

They are working on a trial with a major Nordic bank for their new solution to test the effectiveness of its financial crime detection systems. It will be an enhancement of BAE Systems’ new FinCrime Testing Service – a technology that simulates criminal and victim’s behavior to provide an independent test of a financial institution’s detection systems.

The global effects of money laundering — caused by human trafficking, terrorist financing, and sanction violations – continue to be devastating. Understanding how criminals misuse financial institutions is critical to detection; however, current methods of tracking suspicious behavior is challenging. Research indicates that it costs about $181 billion for financial institutions to detect financial crime.

The trial is focused on detecting human trafficking, but the FinCrime Testing Service will soon be rolled out across the other 22 money laundering offenses such as counter-terror financing and tax evasion. The trial will indicate the areas of vulnerability and allow the financial institution to close these vulnerabilities and improve their detection of financial crime.

BAE Systems’ partner, Acuminor, is a Swedish risk management company that collects information on criminal methods from hundreds of sources around the world.

“It’s a privilege to be working with Acuminor to enhance the development of the FinCrime Testing Service,” Harriet Shaw, venture lead at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, said. “Nuanced detection of criminal and victim behaviours is long overdue, banks are fed up of not being able to quantify the effectiveness of their detection systems and justify the implementation of better, more targeted detection techniques. This collaboration and proof of concept takes us an enormous step forward.”