As technology evolves, so does the the threat of financial crime. How can partnering programs enable financial institutions to use tools and technology to keep pace with financial criminals and reduce third-party risk?
- Financial criminals are able to leverage the latest technology to facilitate their illegal activities. To keep pace with them, regulators, regulated organizations, and solution providers must rapidly adapt.
- Financial institutions and other regulated businesses need to use the latest tools and technology to guard against new and emerging risks.
- To help achieve this, technology partnership programs enable customers to use data across a wide range of use cases, while also ensuring that the customers get full value from both their data and their technology investments.
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The world of financial crime prevention and third-party risk management is constantly evolving.
Financial criminals continue to leverage the latest technology to facilitate their illegal activities, and to keep up with them, regulators, regulated organizations and solution providers need to rapidly adapt.
How has COVID-19 affected financial crime?
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this dynamic — increasing online fraud and cyber crime, and highlighting supply chain vulnerabilities — but it has also enhanced several trends that will serve to reduce risk and prevent financial crime in the future.
These trends include digitization and digital onboarding, more holistic customer lifecycle management, and reviews and overhauls of supply chain risk management practices.
Watch: Old Crime, New Tricks — The Corona Correction
In the fight to reduce third-party risk and fight financial crime, depth, breadth and quality of data is critical. At Refinitiv, the collection, curation, analysis and distribution of data is the core of what we do.
But data alone cannot solve the challenges of customer and third-party risk; data is just the beginning.
Tools and technology
To keep up with new and emerging risks, financial institutions and other regulated businesses also need to engage with the latest tools and technologies.
At Refinitiv, one way in which we support customers in accessing and using the latest technology, is through our extensive, curated network of partners.
Through this partnership ecosystem, we can bring our data to life for a wide range of customer-use cases, enable customers to leverage new and innovative tools, and achieve cost reductions while maximizing the benefit of their data and technology investments.
Several areas of technology advancement have recently emerged as drivers of the next leap forward in financial crime prevention: AI and machine learning (ML), network analytics, and digital onboarding and customer lifecycle management.
In financial crime prevention, and particularly transaction screening, AI/ML tools are becoming the norm. Companies are enhancing backward-looking rules-based methodologies with predictive and preventative capabilities.
Big data and network analysis are also gaining traction in KYC and AML. Technology can identify patterns and spot previously hidden links and interactions between entities and individuals.
The impact of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated the trend towards digital banking.
Digital onboarding is a critical piece of this. Coupled with improved CRM and CLM systems to create single views of the customer, firms can reduce risk and financial crime, while improving customer relationships and speeding-up client onboarding.
The push to embrace these technologies in compliance programs is significant. In Refinitiv’s Innovation and the Fight Against Financial Crime report, 82 percent of respondents said they are under pressure to be more innovative.
But simply buying the tools is only a first step; 73 percent of those same respondents said they are struggling to actually harness technological advancements.
Integrating data and technology
To ensure you get best value out of your data and technology investments, it is critical to understand how the two interoperate. A strong integration between data and technology can have a significant impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of your risk and compliance efforts.
Refinitiv’s partnering program not only ensures that customers can use our data across a wide range of use cases, but also ensures that the customers get full value from both their data and technology investments.
Delivery methods for our data allow for ease of integration with existing third-party systems, such as a CRM system, in order to manage onboarding, KYC and third-party due diligence.
We work closely with our partners, providing dedicated data specialists to ensure partner systems accurately interact with our data at a granular level — from secondary identifiers, to keywords to sub-categories.
This significantly reduces time to implement new technology, improves efficiencies, and reduces costs across compliance programs.
In an environment of rapid digitization, and evolving technology, there is no shortage of new capabilities and technologies to embrace.
Selecting tools in isolation, however, risks not achieving the intended benefits.
By working with Refinitiv and our partners, customers can gain the benefits of data, technology and collaboration, to maximize the benefits of their investments, and make meaningful improvements to risk management and compliance efforts.
