Artificial Intelligence & Anti-Financial Crime

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Introduction

Leading Point Financial Markets recently hosted a roundtable event to discuss the feasibility of adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) and Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM).

A panel of SMEs and an audience of senior execs and practitioners from 20+ Financial Institutions and FinTechs discussed the opportunities and practicalities of adopting data-driven AI approaches to improve AFC processes including KYC, AML, Payment Screening, Transaction Monitoring, Fraud & Client Risk Management.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type="1_3" _builder_version="3.25" custom_padding="|||" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_text _builder_version="3.27.4" custom_padding="43px|||||"]“There is no question that AI shows great promise in the long term – it could transform our industry…” Rob Gruppetta, Head of the Financial Crime Department, FCA, Nov 2018
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

AFC involves processing and analysing vast volume and variety of data; it’s a challenge to make accurate & timely decisions from it.

Industry fines, increasing regulatory requirements, a steep rise in criminal activities, cost pressures and legacy infrastructures is putting firms under intense pressure to up their game in AFC.

90% expressed the volume and quality of data as a top AFC/CLM challenge for 2019.

Applying standards to internal data and client documents were deemed as quick wins to improving process

80% agreed that client risk profiling and the analysis across multiple data sources can be most improved - AI can improve KPI’s on False Positives, Client Risk, Automation & False Negatives.

While the appetite for AI & Machine Learning is increasing but firms need to develop effective risk controls pre-implementation

Often the end to end process is not questioned; firms need to look beyond the point tech, and define the use case for value

Illuminating anecdotes shared on how to make the business case for AI/ Tech. Business, AFC Analysts and Ops have different needs

Firms face a real skills gap in order to move from a traditional AFC approach to an intelligent-data led one. Where are the teachers?
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60% of respondents had gone live with AI in at least one business use-case or were looking to transition to an AI-led operating model

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AI & Anti-Financial Crime 

Whether it is a judgement on the accuracy of a Client’s ID, an assessment of the level of money laundering risk they pose, or a decision on client documentation, AI has the potential to improve accuracy and speed in a variety of areas of the AFC and CLM process.

AI can help improve speed and accuracy of AFC client verification, risk profiling, screening and monitoring with a variety approaches. The two key ways AI can benefit AFC are:

• Process automation – AI can help firms in taking the minimum number of steps and the data required to assemble a complete KYC file, complete due diligence, and to assign a risk rating for a client
• Risk management – AI can help firms better understand and profile clients into micro-segments, enabling more accurate risk assessment, reducing the amount of false positives that firms have to process

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Holistic examination of the underlying metadata assembled and challenging AI decisions will be necessary to prevent build up of risk and biases

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Mass retraining will be necessary when AI becomes more integral to businesses

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KYC / Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

Key challenge: How can anti-money laundering (AML) operations be improved through machine learning?

Firms’ KYC / CDD processes are hindered by high volumes of client documentation, the difficulty in validating clients’ identity and the significant level of compliance requirements

AI can link, enrich and enhance transactions, risk and customer data sets to create risk-intelligence allowing firms to better assess and predict clients’ risk rating dynamically and in real-time based on expected and ongoing behaviour - this improves both the risk assessment and also the speed of onboarding

AI can profile clients through the use of entity resolution which establishes confidence in the truth of the clients identity by matching them against their potential network generated by analysis of the initial data set provided by client

Better matches can be predicted by deriving additional data from existing and external data sources to further enhance scope & accuracy of client’s network

The result is a clear view of the client’s identity and relationships within the context of their environment underpinned by the transparent and traceable layers of probability generated by the underlying data set
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To improve data quality, firms need to be able to set standards for their internal data and their client’s documentation

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82% of respondents cited ‘Risk Analysis & Profiling’ as having the most opportunity for improvement through AI

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If documentation is in a poor state, you've got to find something else to measure for risk – technology that provides additional context is valuable

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Transaction Screening

Key pains faced by firms are the number of false positives (transactions flagged as risky that are subsequently found to be safe), the resulting workload in investigating them, as well as the volume of ‘false negatives’ (transactions that are flagged as risky, but released incorrectly)

AI can help improve the accuracy and efficiency of transaction and payment screening at a tactical and strategic level

Tactically, AI can reduce workload by carrying out the necessary checks and transactions analysis. AI can automate processes such as structuring of the transaction, verification of the transaction profile and discrepancy checks

Strategically, AI can reduce the volume of checks necessary in the first place by better assessing the client’s risk (i.e., reducing the number of high risk clients by 10% through better risk assessment reduces the volume of investigatory checks).

AI can assist in automating the corresponding investigative processes, which are currently often highly manual, email intensive with lots of to-and-fro.
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A ‘White List’ of transactions allows much smoother processing of transactions compared to due diligence whenever a transaction is flagged

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82% of respondents cited ‘Risk Analysis & Profiling’ as a key area that could be most improved by AI applications

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Transaction Monitoring

Firms suffer from a high number of false positives and investigative overhead due to rules-based monitoring and coarse client segmentation

AI can help reduce the number of false positives and increase the efficiency of investigative work by allowing monitoring rules to target more granular types of clients (segments), updating the rules according to client’s behaviour, and intelligently informing investigators when alerts can be dispositioned.

AI can expand the list of features that you can segment clients on (e.g. does a retailer have an ATM on site?) and identify the hidden patterns that associate specific groups of clients (e.g., Client A, an exporter, is transacting with an entity type that other exporters do not). It can use a firm’s internal data sources and a variety of external data sources to create enriched data intelligence.

Reinforcement learning allows firms to adjust their own algorithms and rules for specific segments of clients and redefine those rules and thresholds to identify correlations and deviations, so different types of clients get treated differently according to their behaviour and investigative results
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Survey Results

90% of respondents to Leading Point FM’s survey on AI and Anti-Financial Crime cited ‘Volume & Quality of Data’ as being one of the top 3 biggest challenges for CLM and AFC functions in 2019

82% of respondents to cited ‘Risk Analysis & Profiling’ as having the most opportunity for improvement through AI

60% of respondents had gone live with Artificial Intelligence in at least one business use case or were looking to transition to an AI-led operating model.

However, 40% were unclear on what solutions were available 60% of respondents cited ‘Immaturity of Technology’ or ‘Lack of Business Case’ as the biggest obstacle to adopting AI applications
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Conclusion

To apply AI practically requires an understanding of the sweet spot between automation and assisting, leveraging human users’ knowledge and expertise

AI needs a well-defined use case to be successful as it can’t solve for all KYC problems at the same time. In order to deliver value, clarity on KPI’s that matter and reviewing AI considering the end-to-end business process is important.

Defining the core, minimal data set needed to support a business outcome, meet compliance requirements, and enable risk assessment will help firms make decisions on what existing data collection processes/ sources are needed, and where AI tech can support enrichment. It is possible to reduce data collection by 60-70% and significantly improve client digital journeys.

There are significant skills gaps in order to move from a traditional AFC op model to more intelligent-data AI led one. When AI becomes more integral to business, mass re-training will be necessary. So, where are the teachers?

The move from repetitive low value-added tasks to more intelligent-data based operating models. Industry collaborations & standards will help, but future competitive advantage will be a function of what are you doing with data that no one else is.
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70% of respondents cited ‘Effort. Fatigue & False Positives’ as one of the top 3 biggest challenges for CLM and AFC functions in 2019?

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More data isn’t always better. There is often a lot of redundant data that is gathered unnecessarily from the client.

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Spotting suspicious activity via network analysis can be difficult if you only have visibility to one side of the transactions

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If there's a problem worth solving, any large organisation will have at least six teams working on it – it comes down to the execution

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by Alaric Gibson

LIBOR Transition - Preparation in the Face of Adversity

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LIBOR TRANSITION IN CONTEXT

What is it?  FCA will no longer seek require banks to submit quotes to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) – LIBOR will be unsupported by regulators come 2021, and therefore, unreliable

Requirement: Firms need to transition away from LIBOR to alternative overnight risk-free rates (RFRs)

Challenge: Updating the risk and valuation processes to reflect RFR benchmarks and then reviewing the millions of legacy contracts to remove references to IBOR

Implementation timeline: Expected in Q4 2021
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HOW LIBOR MAY IMPACT YOUR BUSINESS

Front office: New issuance and trading products to support capital, funding, liquidity, pricing, hedging

Finance & Treasury: Balance sheet valuation and accounting, asset, liability and liquidity management

Risk Management: New margin, exposure, counterparty risk models, VaR, time series, stress and sensitivities

Client outreach: Identification of in-scope contracts, client outreach and repapering to renegotiate current exposure

Change management: F2B data and platform changes to support all of the above
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WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

Plug in to the relevant RFR and trade association working groups, understand internal advocacy positions vs. discussion outcomes

Assess, quantify and report LIBOR exposure across jurisdictions, businesses and products

Remediate data quality and align product taxonomies to ensure integrity of LIBOR exposure reporting

Evaluate potential changes to risk and valuation models; differences in accounting treatment under an alternative RFR regime

Define list of in-scope contracts and their repapering approach; prepare for client outreach
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“[Firms should be] moving to contracts which do not rely on LIBOR and will not switch references rates at an unpredictable time”

Andrew Bailey, CEO,
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
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“Identification of areas of no-regret spending is critical in this initial phase of delivery so as to give a head start to implementation”

Rajen Madan, CEO,
Leading Point FM

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BENCHMARK TRANSITION KEY FACTS

• Market Exposure - Total IBOR market exposure >$370TN 80% represented by USD LIBOR & EURIBOR
• Tenor - The 3-month tenor by volume is the most widely referenced rate in all currencies (followed by the 6-month tenor)
• Derivatives - OTC and exchange traded derivatives represent > $300TN (80%) of products referencing IBORs
• Syndicated Loans - 97% of syndicated loans in the US market, with outstanding volume of approximately $3.4TN, reference USD LIBOR. 90% of syndicated loans in the euro market, with outstanding volume of approximately $535BN, reference EURIBOR
• Floating Rate Notes (FRNs) - 84% of FRNs inthe US market, with outstanding volume of approximately $1.5TN, reference USD LIBOR. 70% of FRNs in the euro market,with outstanding volume of approximately $2.6TN, reference EURIBOR
• Business Loans - 30%-50% of business loans in the US market, with outstanding volume of approximately $2.9TN, reference USD LIBOR. 60% of business loans in the euro market, with outstanding volume of approximately $5.8TN, reference EURIBOR

*(“IBOR Global Benchmark Survey 2018 Transition Roadmap”, ISDA, AFME, ICMA, SIFMA, SIFMA AM, February 2018)
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by admin

Event: Falsely Positive - Is AI the Silver Bullet for Anti-Financial Crime?

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ADDRESSING THE AFC BUSINESS CHALLENGES

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Firms are facing huge pressure to improve their Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) capabilities in 2019 across fraud, cyber, AML, sanctions, data security, ABAC.

The combination of new and evolving regulation, firms’ operational complexity and increases in cyber crime have led to dissatisfied clients, poor risk management, massive compliance costs and increased competition from challenger banks.

This situation is only getting worse as shortage of expertise, cultural resistance to change, and depleted internal resources create barriers to digital transformation in a fragmented solutions marketplace.

Maturing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is being positioned as ‘the answer’ - some estimating it can reduce costs in AFC by as much as 47%.*

*Autonomous, April 2018, “Machine Intelligence & Augmented Finance”
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 “There is no question that AI shows great promise in the long term – it could transform our industry…”

Rob Gruppetta,
Head of Financial Crime, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
Nov 2018
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HOW CAN DATA-DRIVEN AI APPROACHES HELP?

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[AI] has the potential to slash the costs of the [regulatory] challenge … by reducing false positives in monitoring systems and redirecting the efforts of human experts to other, more productive, areas

World Economic Forum,
Jan 2019
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What outcomes do organisation stakeholder groups seek from their Client Journey, Risk Management and AFC Operating Models?

Business: Reduce onboarding and maintenance bottlenecks to accelerate timelines and improve client journeys, enable data-driven granular understanding of clients.

COO & CTO: Improve the efficiency, accuracy, and adaptability of screening and transaction monitoring workflows to provide efficiency gains and improved KPIs.

Regulatory & Compliance: Automate governance of complex models and reporting tools to support regulatory review and put compliance in the front-line

Risk Management: Segment clients according to contextual and transactional behaviour to better evaluate emerging AFC threats and improved risk thresholds
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HOW CAN FIRMS GRASP THE AI OPPORTUNITY?

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How can organisations grasp the AI opportunity? Is AI a Silver Bullet or a Red-Herring?

What best practices and practical implementation insights are available for organisations to up their game in client digital journeys, risk management & AFC?

An executive workshop of leaders & practitioners from Business, CIO, COO, AFC and Change will assess the opportunity of adopting data-driven AI approaches and discuss practical ways to solve business issues related to AML / AFC. Whether you are an AI skeptic, evangelist or pragmatist, attend this session to:

• Understand AI and how it relates to AFC, Client Journey & Risk Management
• See 3 core business use cases of AI in action with live solutions
• Understand how to structure the implementation journey & pitfalls to avoid

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1. Understand the business challenges & where you can up your game in AFC?

2. Live solutions: 3 core AFC business use cases with AI

3. How to remove barriers & implement with success
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by admin

Innovation is Not Perfect. Accept and Embrace It

Thushan Kumaraswamy
Partner at Leading Point Financial Markets

 

It was my pleasure to attend Societe Generale's breakfast event on 9 November 2018 called "Implementing New Technologies" in Spitalfields, London on behalf of Leading Point Financial Markets. The event comprised of presentations about the FinTech innovation landscape and the use of Robotics Process Automation (RPA) in SocGen, followed by a panel discussion, hosted by Susanne Chishti, Founder of FinTech Circle.

Since there was so much good content and thinking at this event, I thought I would share my views on the event and how it ties to our propositions at Leading Point Financial Markets.

Do not ignore FinTech companies that are not 100% ready

There are thousands of FinTech (and RegTech, LegalTech, WealthTech, InsureTech, XYZTech!) companies just in the UK, let alone globally. Many of these are in different stages of their evolution.

Source: The Startup Lifecycle

Financial services firms, especially larger firms, often resist adopting innovative technologies from companies who don't have a long record of existing clients. In such a fast-moving environment as FinTechs, this can mean losing out on the potential business benefits at a time when competition is squeezing margins and ever-increasing regulatory pressures are driving up costs.

Imagine being able to run a pilot or proof-of-concept for a small area of the business, with an identified strategy of goals and specific objectives, to demonstrate to the senior management team how such a new technology could be used to deliver real business benefits. This kind of pilot can be run in an agile fashion, but require business and IT teams are fully on-board and involved with the project. Since the scope is small, the resource commitment is also smaller than a normal implementation.

There is a significant opportunity for financial services firms who are willing to start these small-scale projects with innovation companies who might not be 100% ready (in the Validating or Scaling phases above) alongside implementation partners who know the technology, have the domain knowledge and understand operating models.

Don't automate a bad process

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) as a concept is easy enough to understand; computer programs (the "robots" or "bots"), using a set of pre-defined rules replicate what humans would do using computer systems in a repetitive fashion. For example, daily copying of client names from an Excel sheet to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This basic automation can free up the human workers to do more valuable work.

Source: Robots Join The Team

This is all good stuff. However, before jumping straight to implementing RPA solutions, it is worth considering what the business process is actually doing. Is this Excel-to-CRM method the best way of getting client details into the CRM system? Is it possible to improve the process first? As part of an RPA implementation, you should be looking at process improvement strategies first, then automating what is left. This way, you save on the number of bots you would need and increase the efficiency of the process as a bonus. Process experts can document existing processes and identify opportunities for improvement prior to any RPA technology implementation.

How does a bot change a password when accessing a core system?

There are some potential gotchas when using bots, like the above question, which can cause problems during day-to-day running. If a bot uses a specific login to access a core system and that login has a password expiry, what happens then? Is the bot expected to define a new password? Should a human get involved? Also, consider licences on existing software platforms; are there any clauses that prevent the use of bots? There may not be right now, but it is not difficult to foresee software companies bringing in new clauses to control the potential uptick of system usage through bots.

Panel Discussion: Selecting and Implementing New Technologies

• Susanne Chishti, Founder of FinTech Circle (Host)
• Anthony Woolley, Head of Innovation, Societe Generale
• Vasu Vasudevan, Digital Enablement Capbility Lead, Schroders
• Richard Archer, Director, EY
• Keith Phillips, Executive Director, The Investment Association and Velocity

The first question was about trends in innovation. The guests talked about the bleed of innovation between FinTechs, RegTechs, LegalTechs, but also into manufacturing and other industry sectors. The biggest topics being:

• Artifical Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
• Big Data
• Cloud
• Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) / Blockchain
• Social & Mobile
• Robotics & Automation

As mentioned above, the twin drivers of competition shrinking margins and regulatory compliance increasing costs are forcing companies to come up with new ways of thinking. This may not come naturally to the larger, older financial services firms. They may have pockets of innovation but sometimes struggle to create a company-wide innovation culture.

The importance of customer-centricity was raised to a question on technological advancements. Building a single view of client will enable improved service to clients and increased revenue growth using data analysis across large cross-referenced data sets to be more specific with marketing and cross-selling.

An interesting question about how to bridge the gap between legacy platforms and new innovations was put to the panel next. It was noted that capacity is required to do this. How do companies get that capacity? By using technologies like RPA to free up people to generate this real value for the business.

Another technique is to use APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) as wrappers around your legacy platforms to make them easier to connect to other, more modern, applications. Using APIs turns your legacy platforms into building blocks that be linked together. A COBOL API can let other systems use the data held in the COBOL system, without the need for expensive COBOL programmers.

Source: Intro to APIs

This brings additional data protection concerns though, as customer data held in these legacy platforms may not have up-to-date data security and data protection applied to them and exposing the data through APIs could potentially increase risk of data loss.

A concern raised by the panel was about the use of RPA as a concrete sticking plaster rather than as a purely temporary fix for the use of legacy technology. The temptation is there once an RPA solution is doing its work, to leave it there rather than address the legacy platform.

The panel were asked about their top three technologies. The answers covered:

• Data aggregation, clustering & consolidation
• AI and ML
• Blockchain
• Data analytics (behavioural analysis for active asset management)
• Digital passports (recording clients' digital identities)
• Intelligent automation (robotics)
• Unstructured to structured data
• Document intelligence (text mining)
• RPA
• Collaboration tools in investment operations
• Natural language processing (voice recognition)
• Cloud (along with data and APIs)

Source: Top 30 Emerging Technologies

One important factor for digital was considering how people interacted with their devices. Many people of a certain age feel comfortable using on-screen keyboards and touch gestures. Some younger people prefer voice interactions through assistants like Alexa, Siri or Google and that audience is only going to grow.

A vital question was put to the panel about how to implement new technologies. FinTechs often feel like they are in a zoo. Potential clients come to see what they can do, have some meetings, but then don't connect again. There are some activities that can improve the relationship-building on both sides for FinTechs trying to scale-up or break into financial services; along with the obvious (but not always followed) things like respecting each other and being collaborative, there is a need to not destroy the start-up's spirit. Go in to the relationship with the understanding that the technology partner is young and may need some support and guidance.

The idea of changing the culture of the financial services firms was discussed. It was believed that this needed both top-down leadership & funding and also bottom-up drive. An internal innovation fund was set up that enabled small teams working on-the-ground to prepare a business case and pitch over six months to present. Over 70 of these teams took up the challenge, with some generating real business benefits. But, it is more than those end success stories that matter; it is the change in mindset across the company that demonstrates that innovating is part of business-as-usual for everyone in the firm, not just a select few tucked away in an innovation lab.

Other key factors were having both business and IT teams engaged and willing to work together as partners, being able to run projects in an agile (or Agile) fashion and accepting projects that "fail fast", but test and learn quickly. It was interesting to see how business architecture could help in these situations by mapping commonalities across the business using capability models and describing roadmaps aligned to customer journeys.

Source: Practical Business Design

One of the major blockers to building an innovation culture was the procurement process in many large financial services firms. These bureaucratic processes can take over eight months to allow a start-up to being implementing a solution, which can destroy the innovation impetus. A fast-track procurement process, enabling implementation of new technologies, perhaps in some protected sandbox environment, taking eight weeks would be a massive enabler. It feels like there is work required to develop streamlined procurement processes, specifically for innovation technologies.

An audience member asked how many start-ups typically fail. In any typical innovation portfolio, an angel investor may have invested in ten start-up companies. Five of these will likely go bust. Three may remain as the "living dead", where they plod along, just existing as a private company, without any hope of getting a return on the investment. The other two may become "superstars", where they go public with a bang and these two pay off the investment in the other eight start-ups.

I believe that, with more help in providing a consistent analysis of these start-ups on behalf of private equity firms and venture capitalists, the ratio of failures:living dead:superstars could be improved.

This was a very interesting panel discussion and my thanks go to Societe Generale for running the event, the guest speakers on the panel & presenting and to Susanne Chishti for hosting. The themes of technological innovations and the challenges of implementing them in financial services were very familiar to what I have seen in my own experience, but these challenges are not insurmountable with the right support.

If you don't use these new innovations in your business, for example in the field of anti-financial crime, where do you think the criminals are going to go when your competitors
do use them?

Final thought: You cannot wait for the perfect innovation. By the time that happens, your competition may be far ahead of you. You would be better off using what innovation can offer now, but work together with the technology companies to complete that picture for your business.

The right partner can help intersect the old world with the new.

#innovation #event #socgen #data #technology #startup #scaleup #financialservices #ai #ml #rpa #robotics #blockchain #bigdata #cloud #fintech #regtech #legaltech #wealthtech #insuretech #implementingnewtechnologies #leadingpointfinancialmarkets #leadingpointfm #lpfm

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by Thushan Kumaraswamy

How will the FCA business plan impact organisations over the next two years?

Leading Point of View
How will the FCA business plan impact organisations over the next two years?

Introduction

The FCA has recently issued its business plan (1) and focus for the upcoming four quarters. Kicking off with some stats – a mix of sobering and positive, the paper gives a clear outline of its proposed, cross-sector, regulatory oversight. One of the greatest challenges for the industry at present is the implementation of MiFID II provisions.
The FCA makes the point that this will facilitate the introduction of ‘major reforms to improve resilience and strengthen integrity and competition in wholesale markets’. Furthermore, work around market abuse will be enhanced. We highlight notable elements of the business plan and their implications for organisations, below.

Cybersecurity

Across all financial sectors lies the risk of cyber-attacks. With the impending implementation and governance of the General Data Protection Regulation, and potential fines of up to 4% of company revenue, organisations’ technological and operational resilience must be second to none. The FCA deems these qualities pivotal pieces of the cyber security jigsaw; it aims to police cyber capabilities and monitor financial crime and all major outages
during the upcoming year.

Senior Managers and Certification Regime

Whilst 2015/2016 saw banks and insurers bring about the operational changes borne out of SMCR, during 2017/2018, the FCA plans to oversee the resulting culture and governance of this significant shift in responsibility. Currently under consultation is the extension, to be implemented by 2018, of SMCR to all firms covered by FSMA. This would cement the prevailing accountability of senior managers’ individual areas of business within the industry.

Customer Engagement & Competition

The theme driving the most recent directives and regulations is placing the ball in the customers’ court. The dramatically changing financial landscape is being molded by the General Data Protection Regulation, the Payment Services Directive 2, to name but a few. The Open API world further allows the customer to have greater choice and engagement with their banking decisions. The FCA is likely to zero in on firms’ development in digitisation and automation and stewardship of customer data with a critical eye, to ensure there is no abuse.

Buy-side | Asset Management

MiFID II implications are beginning to take shape, however there is much to be done. The FCA recognises MiFID II as post-crisis regulation; it is driving reforms that will promote cross-sector market integrity and competition,
and consumer protection. Firms’ annual budgets will now, more than ever, be targeted towards improving IT systems and infrastructure, develop data capabilities, and ensure operational risk is kept at bay.

 

Leading Point Financial Markets brings compelling value at the intersection of Data, Governance & Compliance, and Digital and Operating Model Change initiatives. If you would like to further consider any of these impacts on your organisation, please contact saskia.blake@leadingptconsulting.com or rajen.madan@leadingptconsulting.com.

(1) https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/corporate-documents/our-business-plan-2017-18

 

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by Rajen Madan