OCBC taps AI to fight financial crime

It will use a programme with an algorithm to identify and reduce alerts of suspicious financial activity.

OCBC Bank will use artificial intelligence (AI) in its fintech operations to fight off financial crime.

According to a press release, OCBC transaction monitoring team and its Fintech unit, The Open Vault at OCBC, conducted a proof of concept with Fintech company, ThetaRay, which concluded earlier this year.

The bank is now in an extended proof of concept and pre-implementation phase, involving advanced testing with additional test data.

In the proof of concept stage, the technology was used to analyse one year’s worth of OCBC Bank’s corporate banking transaction data. The findings showed that it was able to reduce the number of alerts that did not require further review, by 35%.

The programme will use an algorithm to detect anomalies in transaction behaviour by assessing broad parameters, including products, customers, and risks.

After the tests, the bank targets to roll out the technology in Q2 next year.