AMLA ¦ Conference Panel 3: “Financial Crime and Technology: Risks and Responses in a Digital Age”

Why technology is both the threat and the answer

Financial crime is changing fast. What once centered on manual fraud, cash movement, and traditional laundering methods now runs through digital channels, automated tools, instant payments, and encrypted systems. The panel discussion at the 2026 AMLA Conference made one point very clear: technology is reshaping financial crime at the same pace as it is reshaping finance itself.

The challenge is no longer limited to detecting old criminal methods in new settings. Criminals are building on the same tools that legitimate institutions use every day. Artificial intelligence, deepfake software, instant payment rails, crypto assets, and digital platforms are all being used to move money faster, hide identity, and scale fraud across borders.

Digital tools are expanding criminal reach

One of the most striking developments highlighted in the discussion was the digitalization of underground banking. Europol described the rise of digital hawala hubs, apps designed for private money transfers that are now being exploited by criminals to move illicit funds with a lower risk of detection. These tools are not public platforms in the normal sense. Access is restricted to trusted users inside informal networks, often with deposits, fees, and private membership rules that mirror the structure of traditional underground banking, but with digital speed and reach.

This matters because it shows how criminal systems adapt quickly to new technology. The same features that make these apps attractive to legitimate users such as speed, privacy, and convenience also make them useful for laundering money and moving value across jurisdictions. Similar concerns exist with cryptocurrencies, virtual items, and instant payment systems. These tools were not built for crime, but they can be adapted for it almost immediately.

Bastian Schwind-Wagner _Follow

"Financial crime is evolving at speed through AI, instant payments, crypto assets, and digital underground banking tools. The panel made clear that criminals are using technology to scale fraud, move illicit funds faster, and stay ahead of traditional controls.

The response must be equally connected and data-driven. Stronger data quality, structured sharing, and closer cooperation between institutions, supervisors, law enforcement, and academia will be essential to detect threats earlier and disrupt criminal networks more effectively."

Digital banks face a different kind of exposure

The panel also showed that digital-only banks face a distinct but not unique risk profile. Remote onboarding, high customer volumes, and fast growth can increase exposure to identity fraud, synthetic identities, and account misuse. At the same time, digital banks often have a major advantage over legacy institutions: they can react much faster.

That ability to adjust rules quickly, detect patterns through machine learning, and use customer data more effectively can make a real difference. In some cases, digital banks may be better equipped to spot fake documents than a person at a physical counter. But the risk profile remains real, especially when criminals use AI-driven impersonation or recruit people online to open accounts and move funds on their behalf.

The broader lesson is that all banks are now in the same fight. The difference is not whether a bank is traditional or digital, but how well it can use data, technology, and partnerships to respond.

Criminal networks are becoming more professional

Another major theme from the panel was the rise of crime as a service (CaaS). Criminals no longer need to carry out every step themselves. They can hire specialists to open accounts, launder money, run scams, or provide technical support. This makes the threat more modular, more scalable, and harder to disrupt.

The same is true in crypto-related crime. Fraud, ransomware, darknet markets, sanctions evasion, and laundering are increasingly part of a single operating model. That shift means investigators and institutions can no longer treat these threats as separate silos. They are interconnected and often move through the same infrastructure, the same individuals, and the same payment chains.

Academia has more to offer than many institutions realize

The academic perspective in the panel was especially important. Research in anti-money laundering has advanced well beyond rule-based systems. Many institutions still rely heavily on fixed thresholds and indicators, but these can be learned and gamed by criminals. Machine learning, anomaly detection, graph analysis, multimodal models, and synthetic examples all offer stronger ways to identify suspicious activity.

The gap is not just technical. It is also organizational. Academic research often moves slower than criminal innovation. That is why closer cooperation between universities, financial institutions, and public authorities matters so much. If new methods are tested early, they can be used before they become widely known to the criminal side. That kind of collaboration can help the public sector stay ahead rather than simply catch up.

Crypto analytics is becoming a core investigative tool

The crypto discussion showed that digital assets are now part of both the crime problem and the solution. On the one hand, crypto transactions are fast, pseudonymous, and easy to use across borders. That creates obvious risks. On the other hand, blockchain technology also creates a permanent record that investigators can use.

That transparency is a major advantage. It allows law enforcement and private sector analysts to monitor funds in near real time, trace laundering paths, identify infrastructure, and move from reactive case building to proactive intervention. Asset freezing , network tracing, and identification of stablecoin-based illicit flows are becoming more central to financial crime response.

The scale is significant. The panel highlighted very large levels of illicit crypto activity, including scams, ransomware, darknet markets, and laundering networks. The exact figures will keep changing, but the direction is unmistakable. Crypto crime is growing, and so is the need for better analytical tools.

Data is the foundation of effective response

A repeated message throughout the discussion was that technology is only as good as the data behind it. That means common definitions, consistent semantics, structured fields, and usable typologies are the base layer.

Data sharing alone is not enough. Shared information must be standardized, lawful, proportionate, and operationally useful. Typologies should be machine readable, not just narrative. Risk signals should be able to move across institutions and jurisdictions without losing meaning. Privacy-enhancing technologies can help make this possible through secure computation, federated learning, clean rooms , and other controlled methods.

The goal is better intelligence. That means fewer false positives, earlier detection, stronger alerts, and faster disruption of criminal networks.

AMLA and the shift toward a connected system

The discussion around AMLA showed how much the future of financial crime fighting depends on building the right infrastructure now. AMLA is being designed in a new environment, with no old legacy systems to unwind, but with very high expectations. Its role is not just to store data. It is to turn data into risk understanding, and risk understanding into coordinated action.

That requires interoperability across supervisory authorities, FIUs, and both financial and non-financial sectors. It also requires strong data quality, clear governance, secure architecture, and careful handling of sovereignty and security concerns. The idea is to build a digital service hub that can support the wider network, not a closed system that sits apart from it.

The main conclusion

The financial crime threat landscape is expanding quickly, but the discussion made one thing clear: technology is not only the problem. It is also one of the strongest parts of the response.

The real challenge is integration. The fight against financial crime now depends on connected systems, shared intelligence, structured data, and practical cooperation between public and private actors. Criminals already operate as networks. The response must do the same.