AI-enabled technology to automate third party risk intelligence collection and to identify and contextualise opportunity
There is no shortage of regulatory guidance on adverse media screening. FATF Recommendation 10 sets the risk-based foundation. The EU’s AMLD6 and forthcoming AMLR raise the bar on continuous monitoring. The FCA, FinCEN, MAS, HKMA and FINMA each publish their own thematic reviews and expectations. Most compliance teams are not short of guidance.
Read MoreHMRC has, for the first time, brought its scattered AML sector guidance into a single manual. It sets out the clearest recent statement of what a UK supervisor expects across the whole due diligence pipeline, from identity verification through to the ongoing monitoring that adverse media screening exists to support.
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smartKYC has won Best Financial Crime Investigation and Reporting Solution at the RegTech Insight Awards Europe 2026, the 6th annual A-Team awards.
We have won the award for ‘Best AI/ML Solution for ESG’ at the ESG Insight Awards!
KYC (Know Your Customer) screening is an essential process for businesses to identify and verify their clients’ identities as well as surfacing any potential risks associated with them. This process helps mitigate the risk of financial fraud, money laundering and other illegal activities by following KYC regulations. The information gathered during KYC screening can come from various sources, including both structured and unstructured data sets; processing these data sets presents several difficulties that businesses must overcome.
smartKYC has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to address the very shortcomings MAS identifies. Here we review MAS’ observations regarding areas for improvement in each of the four categories that formed the scope of its inspection, and how smartKYC has been designed to meet the challenge of each.
What is entity resolution and why is it important?
When carrying out Know Your Customer (KYC) screening, a challenge many organisations face is determining whether data refers to the same entity or multiple, different entities. Entity Resolution (ER) is a technique that allows you to know if real-world entities are linked—or not. Once the entities have been determined as equivalent, a common identifier is added, linking the different records. This enables you to create unique customer profiles and avoid duplication.
ESG is very topical at the moment but there continues to be confusion around the term and what it means for organisations when it comes to risk.
One thing that is for certain in 2022 is that globally we can expect to see further AML regulations, particularly in the crypto and digital financial market space. Last year, we saw a key shift in focus to digital financial markets, with the EU’s 6th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (6AMLD) now incorporating virtual asset service providers (VASPs).
On 21 May this year, the FCA wrote an open letter to CEOs of the retail banking industry in the United Kingdom. The letter highlighted a range of shortcomings with regard to their financial crime systems and controls.
smartKYC, the world’s most advanced enterprise solution for KYC due diligence automation, has today announced the addition of the Hindi language and script to smartKYC’s multilingual Natural Language Processing technology. smartKYC’s technology now processes and analyses over 35 different languages in multiple writing systems including Latin, Chinese, Arabic and Devanagari.
Private banks and wealth managers face unique KYC screening demands. Their clients will often require a more enhanced background check due to their association with certain jurisdictions or sectors, the sophistication of their banking and investment needs or their raised public profile.