Data drives insights to fight financial crime

This is the third and final blog in a short series by Deloitte Partner, Amanda Lui, written to showcase how the latest technology can help superannuation and wealth management organisations reduce financial crime.

Financial criminals' success is usually found in data, and their  ability to access it. It’s up to financial services organisations to outsmart increasingly persistent hackers and protect their customers’ data and earn their ongoing trust in doing so.

Wealth Management and Superannuation firms have unique challenges with data, which are often  housed on multiple systems, for example  due to outsourced administration or merger activities. . In addition, the nature of the products are often long-term and with the introduction of stapling under the recent Your Future, Your Super legislation, client information will increasingly span their entire working lives into retirement.

There are a number of ways in which financial services organisations can remain resilient and reduce the risk of financial and reputational damage resulting from regulatory enforcement actions. It’s more important than ever to employ new technology and approaches to tackle the evolving challenges that surround financial crime.  

Let’s take a look at a recent success story. Our work with a Hong Kong SAR subsidiary of a foreign bank found themselves weeks behind in responding to requests for reporting and information. Knowing the importance of data-driven insights, the bank decided to leverage cloud computing, big data and analytics to digest huge volumes of structured and unstructured data and get on top of their workload. 

These technologies consolidated data from disparate sources to enhance accuracy and accessibility of Know Your Client (KYC) information throughout the organisation. This enabled a single, aggregated source of information with near real-time access to data enabling efficiencies in data requests – and the necessary reports for senior management. Even better, the organisation could confidently perform proactive and detailed analysis to identify potential criminal activities across different client groups, known as ‘look across’ reviews.  

Providing a solid foundation to develop more advanced AI-driven technologies, and to enhance the overall financial crime risk management framework, this tech solution set the bank up for success to create a defensible model for emerging risks.

Are you ready to fight financial crime with smart technology? 

Read our Asia Pacific case studies to uncover how technology can transform financial crime risk management in financial institutions. Find out more about Deloitte's Financial Crime solutions.