There are a lot of political and social issues swirling around the use of social media. Increasingly, social media accounts are also being used for business communication, banking, and a wide variety of other professional applications.

At the same time, fraud detection has become more important than ever before. New account fraud, synthetic identity fraud, and ecommerce fraud prevention require constant vigilance and technological development. Fraud concerns have also spurred increased interest by government entities concerned with consumer safety and protection. AML technology is a crucial way of ensuring not only compliance with that interest but also consumer protection.

AML Technology

Why is AML technology so crucial? The task of remaining in compliance and protecting customers and clients has become too great for human beings to accomplish on their own. It is now absolutely essential to have the help of computers and technology In order to ensure that independent testing, ongoing training, internal controls, and customer-based risk are all managed properly.

Where Does Social Media Pose a Risk?

Social media is increasingly providing a way of validating data and implementing customer identification procedures. It is important that customer identification be multilayered so that false identities and information can be identified. One layer of customer identification procedures is monitoring of social media, yet the rise of fake social media accounts makes this problematic at times.

AML Technology Changes

How is AML technology changing to meet these new challenges?

AI

The first thing that we’re seeing in AML moving forward is significant investment in artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic. Natural language processing allows programs and technologies to “think” more and more like a real human being. This makes it simpler to analyze something and tell not only whether a real human wrote it, but which human wrote it.

Social Biometrics

A person’s social media presence is as unique as their fingerprints or retinal scans. Hunts through Twitter, Facebook, and Google accounts can identify a person’s unique footprint in the digital world as well as turn in information about an individual that is impossible to get from any other source. Additionally, this type of social biometric scanning is able to gather information about people with little credit history who don’t spend quality time with their banks but who certainly have a social media presence. Because this type of AML technology is constantly scanning the Internet, it is constantly being updated with 360° informational views.

Blockchain

Another way that AML technology is evolving is by using time-stamped blockchain technology to verify customer identity at every transaction. Blockchain technology stores information in many different places, making it more secure against hacking as well as providing a dynamic view of consumer banking and spending habits so as to quickly and securely offer new services and products with reduced onboarding.

The Future

What does the future look like for AML technologies?

Fast Positives

One important area that needs work is false positives for suspicious activity alerts. Recent industry statistics and surveys estimate that as many as 90% of such alerts are false positives. Once false positives are run more than half of them will take five minutes or more to close out. Another 30% of these false positives will take more than 30 minutes to resolve. And one in 10 false positives requires more than an hour of wasted time to resolve. When this kind of time wastage is multiplied by thousands and thousands every month, it destroys customer confidence and has a “boy who cried wolf” effect on banks and other customer service providers.

Improved Customer Service

In every industry, customer services everything. Get a survey done by Thomas Reuters in 2016 found that almost 90% of customers at corporate banks have not had a good experience when it comes to AML and KY C technologies. There’s a lot of room here to grow and improve.

Legacy Systems Need Updating

Legacy systems are holding back corporations looking to expand into new areas or incorporate new technologies. Across the spectrum there is a patchwork of point solutions, some of which don’t talk together. It’s important for AML technology to aggressively address this issue.

For those who are prepared to invest in the future of AML, opportunities are endless.