Nasdaq Makes Push Into Anti-money Laundering Tech With New AI-based System

The process of investigating alerts, which can potentially be as many as 300,000 a month, is currently manual, making it costly and labour intensive, Nasdaq said. Banks usually cast a wide net to catch illicit activity so the vast majority of these alerts ends up being false.

“Banks are worried about that wide net because of the cost,” said Darren Innes, head of AML technology, sell-side and buy-side solutions at Nasdaq. “We are giving them the opportunity to reduce that cost.” Banks have seen the number of alerts surge during COVID-19 as illicit activity attempts increased, Innes said.

While Nasdaq has long been a provider of market technology, including trade surveillance systems, the launch marks the exchange group’s foray into the AML sector.

It comes as banks and other financial firms look to automate many of their more expensive and complex back office processes to reduce costs and increase efficiency.