Big Data Intelligence, Visual Storytelling and Collaborative Investigations fuel rapid growth and continued success for Verafin’s financial crime fighting platform.
In 2018, Verafin solidified its position as North America’s leading financial crime management platform. Offering BSA/AML compliance, fraud prevention and management, and high-risk customer management, Verafin grew its customer base to nearly 1800 financial institutions.
“We are very happy with our continued growth and we are particularly proud of the increased adoption of our solutions by larger financial institutions. We have seen good growth in this segment over the past few years, and 2018 saw a rapid acceleration in adoption by larger banks,” said Brendan Brothers, co-founder of Verafin. “Over the past 7 years, we invested heavily in our cloud platform, machine learning and our scalability. Our new capabilities were designed in a large part to serve the needs of this segment. These new customer acquisitions validate that we made the right investment choices.”
Verafin helps its customers stay a step ahead of financial crime by leveraging Big Data Intelligence to significantly reduce false positive alerts; offering Visual Storytelling through advanced data visualization to expedite investigations; and enabling 314(b) information sharing for Collaborative Investigations across multiple institutions to enrich reporting to law enforcement.
As fraudsters become more sophisticated, and compliance costs skyrocket at an alarming pace, more and more financial institutions are turning to Verafin to help them manage financial crime. One example is United Community Bank (UCB), headquartered in Blairsville, Georgia, with $12.5 Billion in assets.
“We were looking for a better approach to reducing false positives, the ability to centralize our fraud detection and management and a solution that would grow and adapt as our size and risk profile evolve. Through our vendor review process, we came to realize that Verafin’s cloud solution checked all these boxes and more,” said UCB General Counsel & Chief Risk Officer, Bradley J. Miller. “It was clear that Verafin’s technology would positively impact our daily BSA compliance processes, particularly in helping us more efficiently and accurately manage our high-risk customers. In addition, we feel the analytical advances they are making through the use of cloud data and machine learning are going to really help us enhance our ability to proactively prevent fraud loss.”
Highlights from the past year include:
- 1 billion financial transactions analyzed per week, significantly reducing false positives for Verafin customers. Leveraging cloud elastic computing, Verafin’s solution is infinitely scalable in order to keep pace with the demanding information needs of banking customers.
- 100 data system integrations now available, eliminating costly ETL efforts. Long known for its integration expertise with leading banking systems, 2018 saw the delivery of many new key integrations including Pathfinder Group WITS for real-time wire fraud prevention.
- 100,000 previously unknown High-Risk Customers identified, reducing compliance effort and risk. In the past year, Verafin significantly enhanced its high-risk customer management functionality with intelligent customer categorization that helps institutions risk rate their customers, which is especially important and timely for acquisitive banks. This approach helps banks improve their Customer Due Diligence/Enhanced Due Diligence (CDD/EDD) processes and strengthen BSA/AML compliance.
- 20,000 cross-institutional collaborations, improving multi-institutional Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filings. Launched in 2015, the FRAMLxchange is the industry’s largest secure 314(b) information sharing network, available to any 314(b)-registered institution. Powered by the Verafin Cloud, the FRAMLxchange network facilitates collaboration among more than 5,000 users.
- Two successful proof of concept investigations into crime ring activity completed. Based on trend analysis in the Verafin cloud, it is estimated that there are at least 100 active crime rings operating in the U.S. today. Following the success of two recent cross-institutional investigations, Verafin will release new crime ring alerts and functionality to help financial institutions detect, investigate and collaborate on complex crimes spanning multiple institutions.
“Our unique customer driven development process, married with 16 years of Big Data and AI experience, and a total focus on fighting crime have been the pillars of our success,” continued Brothers. “We have some exciting plans for 2019 and look forward to the year ahead.”