New US congressional legislation passed last month instructed FinCen of the Treasury Department to warn and make sure that financial institutions mainly banks stop the bias and discrimination embedded in their AML implemented tools.
Under the section called “Automated Technologies to Combat Money Laundering”, as noted above FinCen and the Treasury Department are instructed to warn and stop the: “…such tools (AML Technologies) may contain implicit biases that result in dissemination against individuals based on race, religion or culture.” This is no doubt the warning shot that the financial and especially the banking industry must listen to and be warned. It is true that legacy KYC and Transaction screening solutions are biased, and the banks must seek technologies that are not, while complying.Today the new technology for database mapping and multilingual unification is based on Phonetics, Linguistics and AI/ML, and it works. Technologies and solutions are available and banks must overcome their inherent conservatism, replace their outdated rule based AML solutions and proceed into a better future of operational control, excellence while reducing cost and vast improvement of compliance.
