Danske Bank fights money laundering with AI
Summary
The Baltic state made global headlines when Danske Bank was found to have transferred more than €200bn of suspicious money through its tiny branch in Tallinn. Danske Bank’s transaction-focused AML-detection apparatus proved sluggish in identifying account and money transfer divergence anomalies at the branch in Estonia’s capital. During the pilot of the platform from Quantexa, Danske Bank improved its ability to detect suspicious activity in its market trading business in areas such as foreign exchange, securities and equities. The report, conducted for Swedbank by London-based law firm Clifford Chance, found that €36.7bn in transactions, all carrying a high risk for money laundering, were processed through the bank’s branch network in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania between 2014 and 2019. Meanwhile in 2017, Citigroup agreed to pay almost $100m and admitted to criminal violations as it settled an investigation into breaches of anti-money laundering rules involving money transfers between the US and Mexico.