AI-Driven Insights Give Financial Crime Teams a New Edge

Digital intelligence firm Fivecast is bringing its AI-powered platform—originally used in national security—into the financial crime space.

The platform is designed to help compliance and investigation teams better detect risk by surfacing insights from vast amounts of online, publicly available data. Built around open-source intelligence (OSINT), it applies machine learning to identify red flags across customer profiles and transactions—speeding up risk assessments and reducing manual workloads.

According to the company, the platform has shown a four-fold increase in efficiency over traditional investigative methods when applied to KYC, EDD, and AML use cases. This comes at a time when regulatory bodies are demanding more from firms: new definitions and obligations under EU AMLD6, recent enforcement activity from FinCEN and the OCC, and revised AUSTRAC guidance have raised the bar for due diligence.

Legacy systems and static data sources often fail to capture the broader online activity that may signal criminal behaviour. Fivecast’s offering aims to close that gap by analysing a broad “digital footprint” across online content, including multimedia. The goal: a more complete, risk-based view of customer behaviour and affiliations.

The approach is gaining traction amid growing enforcement. In 2024, U.S. regulators alone imposed more than $4.3 billion in fines related to financial crime, including a $3 billion penalty against TD Bank for shortcomings in due diligence processes.

“Some banks employ thousands of analysts to perform enhanced due diligence and investigate money laundering or terrorism financing,” said Duane Rivett, Co-founder and VP of Strategic Growth at Fivecast. “Just as national security agencies use our products to analyse extremist or terrorist networks online, banks are doing the same with a slightly different focus.”

While the company recently received recognition from the Australian Government’s Department of Defence for its innovation in open-source intelligence, its expansion into the financial sector reflects broader adoption of national-security-grade tools in commercial compliance. The trend suggests financial institutions are shifting from traditional workflows to more adaptive, intelligence-led approaches to risk and compliance.

SIX Rolls Out Data Service to Help Institutions Navigate Digital Asset Rules

Swiss based financial services and market infrastructure provider SIX Group as introduced a new data package designed to help financial institutions better understand their exposure to digital assets amid a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. The Digital Assets Regulatory and Tax Service provides a consolidated view of evolving obligations, aiming to support compliance efforts as digital assets move further into the financial mainstream.

The service enables firms to assess whether more than 80,000 crypto-related instruments—including tokens and blockchain-based assets—fall under specific regulatory and tax regimes. Updated daily, the dataset allows users to monitor and flag changes tied to regulations such as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), MiFID, the OECD’s Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), and the U.S. IRS Form 1099-DA.

It also accounts for traditional financial assets linked to underlying crypto assets and supports compliance with frameworks in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong. The dataset draws on multiple established sources including the ESMA Register, the Digital Token Identifiers Foundation, and CCData.

Financial institutions can access the data through SIX Flex®, the firm’s customizable platform for managing market, reference, regulatory, and ESG data.

Roy Kirby, Head of Core Products at SIX, noted the relevance of the launch: “This tool couldn’t arrive at a more opportune time for financial institutions in Europe and farther afield. It will provide firms with an extremely detailed and reliable snapshot of their digital assets obligations across an incredibly vast array of crypto-based instruments. Critically, it will do so at a time when the regulatory landscape for digital assets is shifting at an unprecedented rate.”

With institutional adoption of digital assets growing, tools that offer structured insights into shifting compliance requirements are becoming increasingly essential.

DTCC Unveils Digital Collateral Management Platform

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has introduced a new digital collateral management platform, marking a significant development in post-trade infrastructure. The platform will be showcased during a live event titled “The Great Collateral Experiment” on 23 April. This initiative is the first demonstration hosted on DTCC’s digital ecosystem, DTCC Digital Launchpad, which launched in October 2024.

Built on the DTCC AppChain using LF Decentralized Trust’s Besu blockchain, the platform aims to improve collateral mobility, capital efficiency, and liquidity. It supports the integration of traditional and digital assets and enables an open digital liquidity ecosystem. The system provides participants with enhanced privacy, security, and control through the DTCC ComposerX framework, offering a scalable, standardised solution to meet the evolving needs of global financial markets.

BlockFills Partners with Fordefi to Expand DeFi Trading Access and Token Coverage

BlockFills, the digital asset trading platform for institutions and professional traders, has partnered with Fordefi, a self-custody MPC wallet provider. The collaboration allows BlockFills to utilise Fordefi’s secure wallet infrastructure to broaden its token offering and respond to increased client demand for decentralised finance (DeFi) trading opportunities. Fordefi supports access to thousands of digital applications across over 90 blockchain networks, including major platforms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

Through the partnership, Fordefi’s clients, including venture capital firms and the DeFi community, gain access to BlockFills’ full suite of trading services across a wide array of digital assets. Fordefi’s MPC wallet technology enhances security by splitting private keys across multiple parties, preventing single-point control. Its proprietary browser extension further secures the transaction process by protecting the entire technology stack from end to end.

Zema Global Acquires cQuant.io to Strengthen Advanced Analytics Capabilities in Energy and Commodities

Zema Global,thea data management and analytics provider for the energy, commodities, and financial sectors, has acquired cQuant.io, a specialist in analytic solutions for energy and commodity companies. The acquisition, backed by investor FTV Capital, enhances Zema Global’s offering by integrating cQuant.io’s advanced analytics platform with its own enterprise data management solutions. This combined capability aims to improve decision-making speed and accuracy for clients operating in complex and volatile markets.

As part of the deal, cQuant.io will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary under the brand “A Zema Global Company,” with its former CEO David Leevan taking on the role of President at Zema Global. The partnership expands Zema Global’s global analytics team and deepens its capabilities in areas such as quantitative modelling, asset valuation, and renewable forecasting. The move reinforces the company’s strategy to provide seamless, real-time insights for global operations.

Euroclear Bank Enhances Collateral Management with Taskize Integration

Euroclear Bank’s Collateral Management Services has adopted Taskize, the platform for investment operations collaboration, to streamline query resolution. The integration with Taskize, along with its support for email and Symphony Messaging, aims to simplify communication across various technologies, and improve efficiency in managing collateral-related tasks.

Taskize creates a unified ecosystem where stakeholders can exchange information, negotiate, and finalise deals in real time. This integration enables front-office traders and other users to maintain updated collateral sets and adjust workflows to suit counterparty preferences with fewer resources. Communication is continuous and centralised, involving both Euroclear as the tri-party agent and trading counterparties through Symphony Messaging integration.

S&P Global Extends ESG Data Offering with Snowflake

A new public and private entity ESG data service is available to clients of S&P Global Market Intelligence on the Snowflake platform, extending a tie-up between the two companies.

Part of S&P Global’s Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Insights Platform, the Global Entity Linking and ESG Data Management Services offering enables clients to clean and map ESG data to traded entities and then subject it to artificial intelligence-led analytics and models on Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud.

The companies said this gives a “unique” view of clients’ entities, hierarchies and linked reference data.

The new tool will “effectively manage the vast volumes associated with sustainability data while offering our clients the flexibility to quickly and seamlessly onboard and integrate new data sources”, said Vikas Sahni, Head of Software for Enterprise Solutions at S&P Global.

The latest innovation from S&P Global and Snowflake is among a number of products and services that vendors are offering as they seek to meet growing demand from financial institutions for private as well as public entity data. Volatility in equity markets and narrowing spreads on once-illiquid fixed-income assets has prompted investors to seek higher returns in alternative assets, such as private equity and credit.

Alternative markets are more opaque than the public markets in which institutions have hitherto largely operated, forcing them to retool their data operations to source intel on companies, funds and lenders. Data on private companies is also often lacking the lineage and metadata to link it to reference and other datasets.

The Global Entity Linking and ESG Data Management Services builds on a collaboration between the two companies forged in 2020 when S&P Global announced that its financial, textual, ESG and alternative data would be made available through Snowflake.

Thai Identity Tech Firm Finema Named Latest Asian Virtual GLEIF Issuer

Finema, a Thailand-based digital identity technology company, has become the first Southeast Asian issuer of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation’s verifiable Legal Entity Identifiers (vLEI).

As a Qualified vLEI Issuer, Finema will be responsible for providing the digital equivalent of GLEIF’s ISO-recognised identity recognition and validation certifier to participating companies in the region.

The vLEI is a virtual identifier that is attached to participating companies and people associated with them, enabling investors and counterpanes to establish a trust-based relationship safe in the knowledge that the organisation is who it claims to be.

Finema is the latest Asian QVI to be announced by GLEIF, following the appointment of China Financial Certification Authority (CFCA) as the first such body in China. GLEIF chief executive Alexandre Kech told Data Management Insight earlier this year that the Basel, Switzerland-based not-for-profit would focus on expanding in Asia as it seeks to bring transparency and trust to often opaque markets.

“Sweeping digitalisation across the global economy provides unprecedented opportunities and incentives to transform the underlying systems organisations use to trust and be trusted,” Kech said after the Finema announcement. “This will free international capital flows and unlock access to the unlimited opportunities of the global market.”

SIX Builds API to Accelerate Database and Security Master Updates

SIX, the data aggregator and operator of financial exchanges in Switzerland and Spain, has launched a new API to accelerate the update of databases and security masters.

The faster data transfer system is designed to enable clients to access and process larger volumes of information, reducing the total cost of data ownership, the Zurich-based organisation said.

The SIX Bulk API is built to ensure market participants have the most up-to-date data to better inform investment, trading, banking, risk management and compliance decision making and reduce processing times from hours to minutes.

Data is delivered through the API in JSON format and can be integrated into multi-threaded Python- or Java-based applications, SIX said in a statement.

“The launch of SIX Bulk API marks a significant milestone in our commitment to innovation and excellence in financial data management,” said SIX Head of Product Development Henk D’Hoore.

“It allows our customer to gain instant access to large data sets and supports super-fast initial load and delta deliveries into their security masters. Financial institutions who wish to move away from traditional file transfer services can now take full control by opting for SIX Bulk API instead.”

GoldenSource Leads Australian Pension Fund’s Digital Transformation

GoldenSource has built an investment data management infrastructure for Australia’s Aware Super, one of the country’s largest superannuation funds, providing the enterprise data management company with a foothold in a country that is forecast to become the world’s second-largest pension market.

Under the first phase of the so-called Project Odin, GoldenSource has deployed its SaaS-based EDM platform as the foundation for a digital transformation of the fund, which oversees the equivalent of US$120 billion in assets.

Operation Odin has also included the integration of the fund’s performance, attribution analytics and reporting tool.

It has been designed to enable the fund to meet an anticipated growth in investment. The Australian pension market was valued at $2.6 trillion in 2024, according to Willis Towers Watson.

“Partnering with GoldenSource has produced the strong foundations of a sophisticated data platform which will not only enable us to stay competitive in a fast-evolving landscape, but maintain our focus on returning the strongest possible risk-adjusted returns for our 1.15 million members,” Michael Clavin, Aware Super Head of Income and Markets and sponsor of Project Odin, said in a statement.