ComplyAdvantage, a global data technology company transforming financial crime detection, announced the availability of the firm’s annual report, The State Of Financial Crime 2022.
Designed as a guide for global compliance teams, the report lays out emerging threats that governments and financial institutions will face in 2022 and prescriptive recommendations for how compliance teams can respond, to ensure that they act proactively.
Based on a survey, the report shares insights and observations from 800 C-suite and senior compliance decision makers who participated from North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
ComplyAdvantage offers insight into financial crime
The respondents represented a range of organizations across enterprise banking, investments, crypto, insurance and FinTech. The State Of Financial Crime Report 2022 uncovers the financial crime trends that compliance officers are most concerned with in the coming year.
Specifically, the 49 page report dives into new themes such as the cybersecurity challenges generated by remote/hybrid working; the implications of ongoing supply chain disruption; the rising threat of ransomware; the evolution of key global sanctions regimes and more.
Currently in its second year of publication, the survey also offers insights into how compliance trends and challenges have shifted over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tom Keatinge, Director, Centre for Financial Crime & Security Studies at RUSI offered insights.
“2022 will prove to be yet another challenging year, given the digital acceleration caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued pace of innovation and market adoption of crypto services and the ever changing sanctions landscape ignited by ongoing geopolitics.”
“Counterrisk intelligence will become a key element in ensuring the FinTech community remains current on the multifaceted threat trends that will confront their businesses.”
Key insights from the ComplyAdvantage report include
SAR filing rises
The volatility of the financial crime landscape, alongside the rapid rise in new technologies and payment methods, was reflected in the 2021 survey. 80% of firms said they filed more suspicious activity reports (SARs) in 2021, compared to 70% who said the same in 2020.
A third of respondents (31%) said they filed 10–20% more SARs in 2021 compared to 2020.
Cybercrime concern grows
Cybercrime will overtake fraud as the top predicate offense of concern.
When asked about the predicate offenses they are screening against , there was a notable drop in concern about fraud as 61% cited this in 2020, compared to 37% in 2021.
Geopolitical hotspots heat up
China, Russia and North Korea were the top 3 firms globally are most concerned about.
Crypto becomes the norm
Cryptocurrencies and virtual assets went mainstream in 2021 and surprisingly, just 2% of survey respondents said they are not considering crypto services and never will.
Charles Delingpole the Chief Executive Officer of ComplyAdvantage also offered insights.
“Reports are great but avoiding regulatory fines or business shutdowns is even better!”
“We will continue to share our vital insights, so that our customers, partners and the greater FinTech ecosystem can protect their businesses from unwanted financial crimes.”
”As the tide of new financial services is on the rise, so is money laundering and related crimes.”
“Possession of informed teams facilitates the ability to assess the known risks in the year ahead and therefore, we will be best placed to protect the integrity of their businesses.”
Already the preferred choice of some of the world’s largest banks, enterprises and high-growth FinTechs, ComplyAdvantage uses machine learning and natural language processing to help regulated organizations manage their risk obligations and prevent financial crime.
ComplyAdvantage’s proprietary knowledge graph, also known as ComplyData is derived from millions of data points and billions of insights that provide dynamic and real-time insights across sanctions, watchlists, politically exposed persons and negative news.
In 2021 ComplyAdvantage experienced record exponential growth fueled by more than one billion searches across 150 million entities that are monitored daily in 2021.
Usage across the company’s AML (anti-money laundering) solution sets hit record levels with searches volumes doubling quarter over quarter for the company’s Customer Screening and Monitoring solution while Transaction Risk Management volumes increased by 4x.
In 2022, the company anticipates its growth momentum to continue to hit record levels.
