Steele will be using TransparINT’s AI-based financial crime-fighting offerings to build new compliance tools.
Steele Compliance Solutions is taking a major step forward in applying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to new compliance tools for financial services firms via its recently announced acquisition of TransparINT, which offers data filtering that exploits machine learning and natural language processing (NLP).
Steele declined to reveal what it paid for TransparINT and assured FTF News that no layoffs have been planned.
“Steele was fortunate to acquire an incredible amount of talent in TransparINT. Many people will be taking on expanded roles in the organization,” Eric Lochner, CEO of Steele, tells FTF News.
Steele is a portfolio company of Bregal Sagemount, a private capital firm with $1.7 billion in committed capital. The vendor’s offerings include Securimate, a system for the onboarding and monitoring of third-parties; Risk-Based Due Diligence; Compliance Wave, a customizable multimedia content library; managed compliance services; and program advisory services for bespoke compliance support.
The TransparINT filtering platform has been targeted at financial services firms that need to identify areas of financial crime and any activities that might cause reputational risks.
“With TransparINT’s deep experience with financial institutions coupled with Steele’s breadth of experience with large global corporations, we can continue to innovate best-in-class products for the broader compliance community.” says Keith Graham, CEO of TransparINT, in a prepared statement.
The TransparINT offerings “filter vast quantities of unstructured data from millions of sources to identify risk potential efficiently,” according to TransparINT officials. “TransparINT’s proprietary AI engine harnesses over 5 million sources to compile risk records on over 43 million entities and individuals across 120 countries. … TransparINT enables compliance officers to far more accurately and efficiently make risk decisions than those relying on conventional data searches or databases.”
With the acquisition, Steele can now offer TransparIT’s “real-time monitoring and search tools for negative news, watchlist, sanction, and politically exposed persons,” according to Steele.
The focus of the combined Steele-TransparINT talent pool will be on how machine learning and NLP technologies can help with the creation of new compliance tools.
“There is so much data and information out there and compliance teams need to monitor it daily. That is impossible for a compliance department to do on their own,” Lochner says. “What TransparINT’s AI solution provides is a way to monitor a broader set of risks while making it easier on the end-user by filtering out false positives.”
The AI-based filtering aspect makes real-time monitoring easier and prevents end-users from being “inundated with information overload. And as you use the solution more, it learns what information to weed out. So, it is always learning and improving,” Lochner says. “Right away our focus is bringing the best of TransparINT’s artificial intelligence monitoring capabilities to Steele’s Integrated Risk Management platform.”
For the near term, the collaboration “means we will be putting our resources into enhancing anti-bribery/anti-corruption, corporate social responsibility and compliance training and adding anti-money laundering to the platform. There is an incredible benefit the market and our clients will get from us deeply embedding the monitoring solutions,” Lochner says. “The anti-money laundering market will also see benefit from Steele’s deep history in human due diligence, adding managed services and field investigations to that market.”
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