FinCAI – Financial Crime Actionable Intelligence via an Enhanced Data Hub.

Money laundering is the process of legitimising crime proceeds. Criminals use a complex system of placement (adding the money to the legal financial system), layering (complex transactions to move money and create legitimacy) and integration (money finds its way back to the criminal via a legitimate source) to make their wealth legitimate. It is estimated that money laundering has a yearly UK economic impact in excess of £100Bn (National Crime Agency, 2020).

In the wider social context, money laundering can lead to further criminal activity including drugs offences, human trafficking, terrorism and fraud. Consequently, it is important that financial institutions and other sectors dealing with large transactions, including, gambling, property and cryptocurrency monitor customers and their activities in order to stop money laundering.

However, this is a challenging and expensive task, made more difficult due to the expansion of online e-commerce and banking. Non-compliance with regulation can result in a significant fine from the UK Financial Conduct Authority.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted businesses and markets, anti-money laundering regulation still has be complied with and criminals have adapted and diversified including exploitation of stimulus measures. As such, financial businesses need fast, cost effective and efficient solutions to onboard and monitor potential money laundering activities; with customer relations and the minimisation of false positives (over 90% of all money laundering alerts are false and require time consuming investigation to rectify) vital for success.

KYC Hub aim to create a world leading software platform that helps businesses meet their anti-money laundering compliance responsibilities by providing customer checks when they apply for their account and facilitating monitoring of ongoing financial activities. These services will use artificial intelligence powered models that help to create an unrivalled data hub and data analysis that alerts businesses to risk and suspect activities.

Innovate UK load funding will enable us to complete our data infrastructure and conduct testing and validation of the KYC Hub platform using our enhanced data hub. Loan funding will allow us to complete and commercialise our data infrastructure and roll out a solution to customers within the UK and internationally.