Financial Intelligence Unit arms itself with AI, ML tools to check money laundering

New Delhi: India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has operationalised an advanced 2.0 version of its information technology system, armed with artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, to check money laundering and terrorist financing crimes in the country’s economic channels.

The upgrade of the technological backbone was required as the volume of data (suspicious transaction reports) flagged by banks and various other financial institutions to the FIU for analysis and further dissemination to investigative and intelligence organisations has been “increasing”, a latest report for the 2022-23 fiscal said.

The agency was set up in 2004 to “play a decisive role in India’s fight against the menace of money laundering and terrorism financing” under the legal setup of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The recently released report has been accessed by news agency which says that the Financial Intelligence Network (FINnet) 2.0 was envisaged as the country’s regulatory environment has been changing, technology landscape has been evolving and hence an overhaul of the existing FINnet 1.0 system was required to achieve an efficient system of collection, processing and dissemination of financial intelligence.

“FINnet 2.0 leverages emerging technologies for superior analytical competencies, data quality improvement, incisive compliance

monitoring and cutting-edge security tools for strengthening anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism capabilities of FIU-India and its reporting universe,” the report said.

It enables generation of risk scores for individuals, businesses, reports, networks and cases to be able to flag high risk cases, entities or reports for immediate action and it prioritises cases by using risk analytics, it said.