Aptitude Advances Financial Crime Detection With Entity Resolution

Aptitude Global is a leading provider of technology and data consulting solutions for regulated industries with a specialization in financial crime. The company was established in 2014 in the UK by former managing directors of technology, data and fintech investments at UBS Bank.

The Aptitude team recognized they needed better data matching and relationship detection capabilities for their Aptitude Intelligence Platform. In response, they formed a strategic partnership with Senzing to add advanced entity resolution to their platform solutions used to combat financial crime and fraud.

The Aptitude solution combines the best graph technologies, entity resolution and graph visualization to optimize the fight against financial crime, identify politically exposed persons and sanctioned entities, and dynamically calculate customer risk.

The financial industry is facing an ever-evolving battle against financial crime. The sophistication of fraudulent schemes, the global nature of the financial system, and the sheer volume of transactions create an environment ripe for exploitation. According to Sameem Jaffrey, Co-Founder and Director at Aptitude, three powerful trends are driving organizations to revisit how they are tackling financial crime:

• A proliferation of bad actors using sophisticated technology and techniques
• Continuously increasing pressure from regulators to prove compliance
• An exponential increase in the cost of meeting compliance

Financial institutions are grappling with these realities while challenged by inefficient processes, fragmented data, and spiraling costs caused by inadequate technology integration and data quality issues.

Compared to traditional relational databases, graph databases and graph analytics are a more effective way to break down data silos, analyze complex data relationships, and uncover illicit activities. By using graph visualizations and analytics, institutions can trace the intricate connections between entities that indicate fraudulent activities – such as unusual transaction patterns or risky relationships – that might otherwise remain hidden in a sea of data.

These analytics are not just about identifying risks. They’re about understanding the context of transactions and customer relationships, which is crucial for a proactive stance against financial crime. However, a common challenge faced by graph database users is understanding what’s going on in a network graph when multiple nodes representing the same real-world entity are not identified and linked or related together. This complexity burdens network graphs, obscuring true relationships and reducing the accuracy of graph analytics.

The Aptitude Intelligence Platform combines the best graph technologies, Senzing entity resolution and graph visualization to deliver an accurate, comprehensive view of customers to mitigate risk better. Senzing technology enables Aptitude’s platform solutions to identify and link multiple nodes that represent the same entity to provide a complete 360-degree view of an entity. As a result, graph visualizations become clearer and more insightful, illuminating hidden relationships and suspicious patterns in real time.

These easier-to-understand visualizations are essential for risk assessment as well as for compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations. For example, consider the case of a money mule network where individuals may have multiple accounts under different names across various banks. Senzing technology can detect and link many of these multiple identities, helping institutions to uncover and disrupt these fraudulent networks.

Senzing entity resolution is a force multiplier in Aptitude’s platform solutions for fighting financial crime.

See the Aptitude Intelligence Platform with Senzing Entity Resolution in Action

The combination of the Aptitude Intelligence Platform and Senzing entity resolution offers a formidable defense against financial crime. Aptitude’s platform caters to a multitude of use cases, from detecting complex fraud and money laundering schemes to ensuring compliance and managing enterprise risks. The platform’s modular design ensures smooth integration into existing infrastructures.

A key feature in Aptitude’s solution leverages the explainability data Senzing entity resolution provides, which allows users to clearly see why a match was made or not, confidence levels, and details of how an entity evolved. Explainability enables investigators and analysts to have confidence in identified entities and relationships, empowering their critical decision-making process. If entity resolution results can’t be explained easily, the adoption rates and value of solutions can be negatively impacted, especially for operational use cases, such as merging duplicate records, detecting identity theft or triggering customer due diligence (CDD) reviews, and compliance and audit reporting.

As financial crimes grow more sophisticated and regulators demand more stringent compliance, the Aptitude and Senzing solution is poised to transform the way financial institutions detect and prevent crime. The Aptitude Intelligence Platform with Senzing entity resolution embodies the innovation and strategic collaboration needed to safeguard the financial landscape of tomorrow.