While so many industries are hyping their use of AI Agents, the Banking and Financial Services Industry has risen to the top as a primary proving ground—and showcase—of AI agents delivering on the promises of AI. This is due to several years of WorkFusion AI agents providing measurable impact on financial crime compliance (FCC) operations. Here are just a couple examples from among our valued customers:
In the area of name sanctions, PEP, and other watchlist alert reviews, Raymond James put our AI Agents to work and quickly automated over 50% of their alerts while reducing manual work by 70%.
Valley National Bank has been using WorkFusion’s AI Agent Tara for payment sanctions screening alert review to auto-adjudicate payment alerts in real time. Through AI Agent decisioning and handling of 65% of Valley’s sanction hit reviews, the bank has vastly improved customer experiences by speeding payments.
WorkFusion AI Agents currently streamline and optimize accuracy in FCC operations at top global banks and financial institutions, demonstrating that they represent the most consistent example of AI agent success on the market.
Three reasons why FinCrime Compliance is ideal for AI agents
AI agents are ideal for FCC operations for three major reasons. First, FCC programs are highly regulated by governments around the world. As such, they must follow specific procedures that occur in a predictable, step-by-step manner. It is the only way for investigators and regulators to determine that a program is properly identifying, investigating, and resolving potential instances of money laundering and fraud. For example, when a bank’s monitoring systems screen customers against sanctions lists, such as those issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, they must accurately identify any potential matches and follow a strict set of procedures to determine whether a true match exists. AI automates such procedures and displays the appropriate records, then suggests a resolution for a person who makes the final decision. By performing all the steps prior to the final decision, AI Agents commonly save an FCC operations team 70% of the manual work which they traditionally had to perform prior to collaborating with an AI Agent.
A second condition that makes AI agents ideal for FCC involves the modernization drive underway at regulatory bodies—in particular, the modernization around AI and AI agents. Traditionally, regulators have struggled to keep pace with financial crimes that leverage cutting-edge technologies which criminals adopt and use long before regulators have time to respond. This is not the case with AI. In fact, regulators in the U.S., Europe and Asia are actively encouraging financial institutions to explore AI usage and deploy it where appropriate, controlled and beneficial. In a fight for global market relevance, federal governments are pushing their regulatory bodies to modernize and become savvy in the latest technologies. This enables regulators to promote the use of new technologies at financial services firms and help them in their battles against money laundering and crimes like fraud that can dramatically damage profitability.
A prime example of banking regulator modernization can be seen at the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA has transformed itself into a user of AI and contributor to AI advancement in the financial sector. “Continuing to improve how we use data and technology is helping us become a more innovative, assertive and adaptive regulator and will allow us to achieve the strategy laid out in our Data Strategy (2022) towards becoming a digital and data led regulator,” said the FCA’s 2024 “AI Update” report. The effort has been strongly backed by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (MCA). Following that report, the FCA recruited 75 data scientists who explore ways the agency can use AI to pursue its objectives.
What this means for banks and other financial institutions is that their own use of AI Agents does not face a combative or hesitant regulatory environment. This enables FCC teams to keep pace with the criminals who are constantly trying to use institutions as a means of making themselves or their ill-gotten gains appear legal and legitimate.
The third aspect that makes FCC ideal for AI agents involves the ease with which a program can prove the value of AI agents with little to no risk. FCC processes are extremely well-defined and able to be isolated individually. This enables program leaders to select and optimize a single process using an AI agent, objectively evaluate the results, and move on when they have proven the use case. Typically, WorkFusion customers begin with one of the following processes:
- Payment screening alert review
- Name screening alert review
- Adverse media monitoring
Once an FCC program experiences the impact and benefits of an AI Agent (especially in terms of savings), program leaders find it easy to secure budget to fund the next phase of AI, typically advancing to suspicious activity investigation and reporting or to an entirely new process.
To learn more, request a demo of WorkFusion AI Agents in action.