Why AML Services Is A Must-Have Security Feature For Banks?

Money laundering activities pose a serious security risk for banking industry as regulators are continuously tightening their guidelines and imposing fines that go as high as 7 figures. Financial watchdogs have forced national governments and international community to take a strict stance against illegal transfer of funds, especially from 3rd world countries into Americas, Western Europe and many tax havens spread across the globe. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) softwares, more commonly known as AML softwares, are considered a secure way of identifying individuals that pose financial risks, thus, allowing banks appropriate response time to deny these probable customers their service.

AML Services – Manual vs. Automated Debate

AML services are being used by all major banks across the globe but most of them are only performing AML screening with the help of a manual review carried out by using human intelligence. As you can imagine, this is time consuming and costs a lot more than a bank would like to pay for it. On the other hand, intelligently automated AML services like Shufti Pro, are performing real time AML screenings for and of their customers at a much lower price. Several of these products make use of Artificial Intelligence to provide results that are truly reliable and beneficial for banking organisations.

In a world dominated by cut-throat competition, manual AML checks have become a constant source of leakage in revenue streams of the banking world.  One such example can be quoted for AUSTRAC, an Australian government intelligence agency, where within 1 year (2016 – 2017), the number of human resource devoted for AML Screening has nearly quadrupled. HSBC, one of the major operators in the region is spending an annual sum of USD 3 Billion to fight against money laundering activities.

AML Software – A Smart Choice

It makes great sense that AML screening is performed with the help of an automatically driven system, supported by a hybrid of Artificial & Human Intelligence. After all, this is a logical business move to replenish revenue streams without compromising on regulatory compliances.

Unfortunately, adoption of AML technology has more to do with financial regulators rather than the banking industry itself. Many banks in the world have already chosen a preferred AML software to perform their screening process but they are awaiting approval from their respective regulators to formally roll out the program.

There can be no stronger case made for FinTech than AML services. Ingeniously designed AML softwares show that technology can not only handle the laborious tasks of the banking world but can perform them with relative ease in real time. A vigilant approach to curb money laundering is need of the hour and there could be no better means to put an end to this menace except for perfectly integrating and implementing AML compliance solutions.