Google unveils 'Anti-Money Laundering AI' following a successful HSBC trial

By: Henry Felix

June 23, 2023 7:20 AM

Google says its new technologies significantly outperform older, rules-based methods for spotting large-scale money laundering operations.

The "Anti Money Laundering AI" (AMLAI) solution from Google Cloud was just released following successful testing with HSBC in London.

Machine learning is used by AMLAI to develop risk profiles, monitor transactions, and evaluate data. Google Cloud has announced in a blog post→ that:

"AI monitoring of transactions substitutes the traditionally established, rules-based technique and leverages the power of financial institutions' data to train sophisticated machine learning (ML) models that provide an in-depth analysis of risk scores."

In practice, Google Cloud states that its trial partner, HSBC, observed a two to fourfold rise in good alerts and a 60% reduction in false positives.

The cost of the service will vary depending on the number of clients served daily by the AML and risk scoring systems, as well as the number of customers included in the training data set needed to spin up the model.

The launch of AMLAI is a step forward for Google and Google Cloud in the financial area. While the current AI zeitgeist is around generative AI products like Google's Bard chatbot, the company has quietly established itself as a fintech developer and banking services provider.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Google quickly deployed a loan processing tool for the paycheck protection program. The business has dabbled→ in different payment methods over the years, such as its widely used Google Pay service and the introduction of Google-sponsored debit cards with near-field communication connectivity.

Google's continued interest in the AML sector could be a good indication for the industry. According to BlueWeave consultancy, the global AML market size was predicted→ to be around $3 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to nearly $8 billion by the end of the decade.

The proliferation of non-traditional payments, an ever-changing regulatory landscape, and a slowly increasing increase in the number of money laundering cases globally are all mitigating factors affecting the expected growth.