OCBC combats money laundering with AI

Fintechs to automate probes into suspicious bank transactions.

The tedious task of tracking money laundering and terrorism funding usually takes one hour to a few days. Solutions from two companies under OCBC Bank's Financial Technology (Fintech) unit, The Open Vault, have reduced the time to a minute.

Silent Eight and BlackSwan Technologies leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct a traditionally two-phased research on individuals and companies suspected of illegal financing.

OCBC Bank's Group Transaction Surveillance Head Alex Ng said, "We saw great potential in these two Fintech start-ups. We felt that this ‘back office process’ of transaction monitoring could definitely use an innovative solution to help automate things and make our investigative research more timely and effective."

This is done by searching for information on individual profiles, and mapping how suspicious transactions may be linked to one another to see if they are indeed fraudulent or illegal.

Silent Eight automatically scans Internet search engines, news sites and internal and external databases to put together the suspicious individual’s lead in just a minute.

BlackSwan Technologies uses AI to analyse the suspicious transactions, by comparing them with a network of related processes and identify possible relationships to previously unknown individuals or companies.

"Money laundering and terrorism financing is a growing area of concern, with the Monetary Authority of Singapore announcing earlier in April this year a government-industry effort to strengthen Singapore’s capabilities in identifying and fighting these threats, and increasing our efficiency in doing so," the OCBC Bank said in a statement.