High street lender Santander UK has revealed an artificial intelligence tool used by the bank is helping combat human trafficking after generating hundreds of leads for police to crack gangs operating in Britain.
The Spanish-owned group told the PA news agency it has been using a new tool, developed by fintech software and big data analytics firm ThetaRay, to detect suspicious activity on customers’ accounts and uncover possible cases of human trafficking and exploitation.
It put the tool in place around a year ago and has since generated hundreds of alerts to pass on to the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to investigate further.
This has helped the NCA bust a number of trafficking rings, according to Santander.
Human trafficking involves the recruitment, or movement, of people for exploitation by the use of threat, force, fraud or the abuse of vulnerability.
According to the International Labour Organisation, around 28 million people globally are trapped in forced labour, commercial sexual exploitation or other forms of modern slavery.
Jas Narang, Santander UK’s chief transformation, data and AI officer, told PA: “At Santander, we have implemented an AI tool to detect suspicious activity on customers’ accounts – helping us uncover potential cases of human trafficking and escalate them to the National Crime Agency.
“The tool detects cases of suspicious activity on customers’ accounts, which our team of specialists work through and, if necessary, will escalate to law enforcement to investigate further.
“This is a first for Santander, taking our financial crime controls and coverage to the next level, and its success so far will inevitably open the door to further deployments of the same kind across the bank.”
He said that in the past, banks used rules-based systems to identify cases of financial crime, but they were unable to spot trends in financial transactions on the scale – or at the speed – that AI can.
“When it comes to more complex and evolving types, such as human trafficking and modern slavery, these rigid systems simply can’t keep up,” said Mr Narang.
“In comparison, AI tools are learning, evolving and becoming more sophisticated every day – just like crimes they are designed to detect in this context.”
The AI tool scours transactions looking for suspicious activity trends, such as recurring payments to classified ad sites or adult services websites, lots of small cash withdrawals from ATMs, and international flights and accommodation bookings.
On their own, they may not seem suspicious but the AI tool helps spot the patterns behind the payments and the subtle indicators of exploitation.
It then allows Santander’s financial crime team of experts to look into the alert and pass it on to the NCA quickly, so that they can take action quickly while the lead is still active.
While privacy campaigners are increasingly vocal about technology being used to analyse accounts and transactions, Mr Narang said the tool has proven to add real value in catching criminals.
“We were passionate about this because of the impact we could have in society and catching criminals,” he said.
“The proof for me is that we have helped the NCA uncover a whole bunch of criminal activity in the last 12 months and they busted various gangs because of the information and analysis we have given them.”
He added that to help ensure accuracy, each suspicious activity alert is looked at by an “expertly trained human being” with the bank’s financial crime prevention team of more than 1,000, before it is escalated to the NCA.
The banking giant is looking at rolling out the AI tool more widely across its global operations and at using it to help detect other types of crime.
The NCA declined to comment.
