With “source of wealth” (SoW) tests becoming increasingly important in the fight against money laundering, using technology to help in the process is speeding it up. Slow onboarding times give the process fresh urgency.
Bank of
Singapore has rolled out an agentic AI-powered tool to
automate a major part of the know-your-customer (KYC) due
diligence process – verifying the legitimacy of clients’ wealth
and transactions.
The bank’s Source of Wealth Assistant (SOWA) enables relationship
managers to generate consistent and regulatory-aligned source of
wealth reports far faster than before – slashing the turnaround
time from around 10 days to just one hour, it said in a statement
last Friday.
With banks and other financial institutions worldwide reporting
that
onboarding abandonment is averaging around 10 per cent,
with more firms suffering this problem, the stakes are
high. This publication has spoken to a variety of firms,
finding that vetting clients’ source of wealth is becoming ever
more detailed and demanding.
In Singapore, for example, the city-state’s major money
laundering scandal of 2023 has prompted authorities to clamp down
on suspected illicit financial flows. Unfortunately, it has also
affected
onboarding times,
Bank of Singapore noted that traditionally, relationship managers
were required to manually review extensive documentation on a
client’s background, business activities, investment history and
income sources to prepare a SoW report. These records included
financial statements, tax filings, property valuations, corporate
submissions and payslips.
The bank said that with its new “assistant,” once the
relevant materials are uploaded, the tool automatically reviews
them and produces a comprehensive, standardised draft report.
This process reduces human error, particularly inconsistencies or
omissions that can occur due to differing levels of experience
among relationship managers.
Using its own resources and those of parent bank, OCBC, SOWA also
validates client information against benchmarks such as salary
ranges and corporate revenue figures, improving the accuracy and
credibility of the output, it said.
With all this new tech, relationship managers remain integral to
the process, the bank said. They review and refine each
AI-generated draft before submission to the bank’s internal
compliance teams as part of its anti-money laundering and
counter-terrorism financing (CTF) framework.
“In an increasingly complex risk landscape, artificial
intelligence can play a pivotal role by automating repetitive
tasks like report generation and data validation. Agentic AI
pushes the envelope further by enhancing efficiency, accuracy and
consistency in decision-making,” Kam Chin Wong, global head of
financial crime compliance at Bank of Singapore, said. “With AI
integrated into the source of wealth reporting process,
relationship managers can shift their focus from manual
documentation to meaningful client engagement and risk
assessment. This not only strengthens client relationships but
also maintains high standards of regulatory compliance while
delivering greater value.”
