June 2025
Singapore's largest money laundering case come to light with over US$2 billion in assets seized in 2023. The subsequent fallout implicated numerous banks, property agents and even a golf club, dominating the nation's headlines for months. Yet, in the grand scheme of financial crime, the amount is but a drop in the ocean.
Approximately US$3.1 trillion in illicit funds flowed through the global economy in 2023 across multiple types of crimes, including terrorist financing and scams. Fraud schemes alone accounted for about US$485.6 billion in losses.
According to Kroll, this number is set to rise, with 71% of executives expecting financial crime risks to increase in 2025. Yet less than a quarter believe that their organisation's compliance programme is "very effective”.
Bridging this gap has been a key topic of discussion across GFTN's forums, as the risks surrounding financial crime increase in both scope and complexity.
Financial crime, a well-connected foe
A key challenge in tackling financial crime is that the problem extends beyond the financial services, said Andy White, Chief Executive Officer of AusPayNet.
White was speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2024, on a panel held as part of a three-part discussion by the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) on novel approaches to combat financial crime.
Financial crimes often originate on other platforms, and end with the financial services, he explained. "We're talking about a really complex lifecycle or ecosystem that will [inevitably] have gaps,” he said.
Fellow panellist Beju Shah, Head of the BIS IH Nordic Centre, agreed, highlighting that criminals are often acting in a tight-knit network that institutions and regulators today lack.
This fragmentation, compounded with the globalisation of financial services, adds to the challenge of addressing financial crime efficiently.
Further, criminals today have widespread access to new tools like deepfakes and generative AI that will allow them to device more sophisticated ploys, added Sarah Pritchard of the Financial Conduct Authority, who spoke alongside White and Shah.
The upside: Technology to combat fraud
While technological advancements are giving criminals more tools, financial institutions and regulators too can use these tools for our benefit.
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), for instance, could reinvent how organisations assess data sharing currently. PETs allow organisations to perform the required data analysis without needing full access to data, said Dr Michael Dewar, Vice President of Data Science at Mastercard. He was speaking on a panel titled ‘Combating Financial Crime Through Innovative Collaboration and Technology’, held during the Point Zero Forum 2025.
“[They] are giving us an ability to do the kind of analytics we want to do without getting our hands on the data, without seeing the individuals represented in the data, and without necessarily revealing the analytics that we're doing to all the parties that are involved in the system,” he added.
Finding common ground for global cooperation
"Financial crime doesn't understand a border,” said Nicole Sandler, Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs at the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT), who was speaking alongside Dewar at the Point Zero Forum. “It crosses borders and therefore, you need to be doing things internationally.”
To do this, the Chief FinTech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Kenneth Gay, proposed identifying areas of common ground. He, too, was speaking on the panel at the Forum.
He suggested that countries can begin with degrees of data sharing that all parties are comfortable with, such as certain characteristics or typologies about the financial crime being perpetrated, or social media and telecommunications data.
"There are certain ways that we can think about how to combine these indicators in a manner that does not entail any data privacy or other kind of rule breaches,” he said. “What I would say is important is really to try to find that common ground in order to establish a north start that stakeholders can then be aligned on.”
Other suggestions for global collaboration include regulatory harmonisation and adhering to global standards like those laid out by the Financial Action Task Force, according to a report produced on the back of a roundtable—one part of the aforementioned three-part discussion on novel approaches to address financial crime.
With the commercialisation of quantum computing on the horizon and agentic AI on the rise, the financial crime landscape is only going to become increasingly complex. To have any hope of addressing it, a concerted effort will be required across all stakeholders.
As Gay said to close the panel at the Point Zero Forum, "Let's get going. Let's get something done.”