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IBM (IBM.NYSE) and Fenergo unleash Watson to navigate anti-money laundering regulatory minefield

More than $10 billion in global fines was handed out to companies and financial institutions in 2019 for failing to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC) and sanctions regulations. Raising the total value of fines since 2008 to $36 billion. That puts a considerable amount of pressure on financial institutions and organizations around the world to fall into line and do so quickly. That has prompted IBM (IBM.NYSE) and Fenergo, a provider of client lifecycle management (CLM) solutions for financial institutions, to join forces on an equipment management agreement giving them the ability to help their clients navigate the multitude of financial pitfalls they face.

“At IBM, we understand the challenges that banks and financial institutions face in cost-effectively balancing customer experience with detection and prevention of financial crimes. Our agreement with Fenergo will allow us to expand our offering with a more comprehensive CLM solution, providing insertion points for our AI-based anti-financial crimes and regulatory compliance management technologies throughout the client lifecycle,” said David Marmer, vice president, offering management, RegTech, at IBM.

IBM and Fenergo will now be able to create programs and solutions that combine Fenergo’s CLM offering with IBM’s RegTech portfolio of AML and KYC solutions, all overseen by Watson. IBM then be able to offer their clients a complete AI application suite focused on risk and compliance while they help clients fend off financial criminals and meet their regulatory burdens.

IBM intends to build on this work to help clients in adding AI-driven insights from its Financial Crimes Insights solution series into Fenergo’s CLM solution, which is designed to help clients reduce false positives in their AML and KYC solutions while reducing the costs of manual intervention, drive operational efficiencies and improve overall customer experiences..

“Financial institutions are grappling with rising costs and fines associated with KYC and AML requirements. Banks and other financial institutions need a CLM system to address regulatory challenges and keep abreast of the changing regulatory landscape. Through this relationship, Fenergo will be available as part of IBM’s offering, allowing access to new and existing clients within IBM’s ecosystem which in turn can help reduce procurement burdens associated with enterprise software. We’re very excited and proud to be partnering with industry innovators like IBM, and the journey we have been on so far,” said Julian Clarke, head of partners and alliances at Fenergo.

Customers using Fenergo’s platform via IBM will be able to access its additional support services, including global IT support, predictive analytics, system developers, augmented reality, multi-vendor processing and a single point of contact interface.

Here’s Rachel Woolley, manager of global AML at Fenergo:

“The scale of financial crime continues to grow while the methods used by criminals to launder the proceeds of crime evolve. Our 2019 fines analysis shows that many of the financial institutions penalised lacked appropriate systems and compliance infrastructures that are necessary to identify and address areas of high risk. Effective regulation technology is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s essential for the future of banking and the reduction in global financial crime.”

IBM will go-to-market with Fenergo’s CLM platform directly.

—Joseph Morton

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