AML Surveillance Technology Innovator Hawk AI Forges Strategic Partnership with Know Your Customer

• AML surveillance technology specialist Hawk AI forged a strategic partnership with digital onboarding and business KYC solutions provider Know Your Customer.
• The partnership will give businesses an integrated anti-fraud solution that will help them avoid the problem of siloed compliance technologies.
• Munich, Germany-based Hawk AI made its Finovate debut in May, demoing its technology at FinovateSpring in San Francisco, California.

Hawk AI, an anti-money laundering surveillance technology company for banks and fintechs, announced a strategic partnership with Know Your Customer this week. The alliance will combine Know Your Customer’s digital onboarding and business KYC solutions with Hawk AI’s transaction monitoring technology. The new offering will give businesses an integrated anti-fraud solution to enhance their defense against financial crime.

“There is a wave of technological innovation taking place in RegTech,” Hawk AI CTO and co-founder Wolfgang Berner said, “from cloud native infrastructure enabling scalability, real-time native processing in a performant, safe and secure way, to fully explained AI and machine learning that augment traditional AML approaches and ensure efficient and effective crimefighting.”

Berner also underscored the challenge of fraud prevention solutions that are not well integrated. “Cutting-edge technology is not enough if information remains siloed,” he said. Berner noted that Know Your Customer shared Hawk AI’s “vision of modular solutions that foster a more holistic approach to fighting financial crime.”

Processing billions of transactions in more than 60 countries every year, Hawk AI’s technology leverages explainable AI and cloud technology to detect financial crime while keeping false positives low. The company reported that reducing false positives can help AML compliance officers save up to 70% of their workday, enabling them to focus on more complex compliance challenges.

Hawk AI made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco. Headquartered in Germany, and founded in 2018, the company demoed its AML Surveillance Suite. The technology blends AI with traditional, rule-based strategies to monitor financial transactions in real-time and help financial institutions and fintechs better detect suspected cases of fraud, financial crime, and money laundering. This method helps identify minor, easily missed anomalies that can be overlooked by traditional rule-based approaches alone.

Hawk AI includes financial services consultancy Capco, and KYC and customer onboarding specialist Ondato – as well as fellow Finovate alums like Visa, Mambu, and Diebold Nixdorf – among its partners. A member of the RegTech 100, Hawk AI has raised $10 million in funding from investors including BlackFin Capital Partners and Picus Capital. Co-founder Tobias Schweiger is CEO.

Photo by Frans van Heerden