In today's financial landscape, understanding the source of funds (SOF) is crucial for ensuring compliance and preventing financial crimes. Financial institutions must verify the origin of funds to comply with regulations and mitigate risks. This blog post delves into the meaning, importance, best practices, and challenges of verifying the source of funds.
What is Source of Funds?
Source of Funds Meaning
The term "source of funds" refers to the origin of the money used in a transaction. This can include earnings from employment, business revenue, investments, or other legitimate income sources.
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Source of Funds Example
For instance, if someone deposits a large sum of money into their bank account, the bank needs to verify whether this money came from a legitimate source, such as a property sale, inheritance, or salary.
Here are some common sources of funds:
- Salary: Imagine you've been saving up from your job to buy a new gaming console. When you finally get it, your salary is the Source of Funds for that purchase. In the grown-up world, this could mean someone buying a house with the money they've saved from their job.
- Inheritance: Now, let's say your grandma left you some money when she passed away (may she rest in peace), and you use it to start a college fund. The inheritance is your Source of Funds for that college account.
- Business Profits: If you have a lemonade stand and make some serious cash, and then you use that money to buy a new bike, the profits from your business are your Source of Funds for the bike.
- Selling Assets: Let's say your family decides to sell your old car to buy a new one. The money you get from selling the old car becomes the Source of Funds for the new car purchase.
- Investments and Dividends: Suppose you've invested in some stocks, and you make a nice profit. If you use that money to, say, go on vacation, then the money you made from your investments is the Source of Funds for your trip.
Difference Between Source of Funds and Source of Wealth
Source of Funds (SOF) refers to the origin of the specific money involved in a transaction, such as income from employment, sales, or loans. It is focused on the immediate funds used in a particular financial activity.
Source of Wealth (SOW), on the other hand, pertains to the overall origin of an individual’s total assets, including accumulated wealth over time from various sources like investments, inheritances, or business ownership. It provides a broader view of the person's financial background.
Importance of Source of Funds Verification
Regulatory Requirements and Compliance
Verifying the source of funds is essential for financial institutions to comply with regulations such as anti-money laundering (AML) laws. Regulatory bodies like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) mandate stringent checks to ensure that funds do not originate from illegal activities.
Financial and Reputational Risks
Failure to verify the source of funds can result in significant financial penalties and damage to an institution's reputation. Banks and other financial entities must implement robust verification processes to avoid involvement in financial crimes and maintain public trust.
Best Practices for Source of Funds Verification
Risk-Based Approach
Implementing a risk-based approach means assessing the risk level of each transaction and customer. Higher-risk transactions require more rigorous verification, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively.
Advanced Technology Utilization
Utilizing advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can enhance the efficiency and accuracy of source of funds verification. These technologies can analyze large datasets quickly, identifying potential red flags.
Regular Updates and Audits
Maintaining updated records and conducting regular audits are crucial for an effective source of funds verification. This ensures that the verification processes remain robust and compliant with the latest regulations.
Common Sources of Funds
Legitimate Sources
Legitimate sources of funds include earnings from employment, business income, investment returns, loans, and inheritances. These sources are generally verifiable through official documentation such as pay slips, tax returns, and bank statements.
Illegitimate Sources
Illegitimate sources of funds might include money from illegal activities such as drug trafficking, fraud, corruption, or money laundering. These sources often lack proper documentation and can pose significant risks to financial institutions if not properly identified and reported.
Challenges in Verifying Source of Funds
Complex Transactions
Complex transactions, involving multiple parties and jurisdictions, pose significant challenges in verifying the source of funds. Tracing the origin of such funds requires comprehensive analysis and robust systems to track and verify all related transactions.
Privacy and Data Protection Concerns
Verifying the source of funds often involves handling sensitive personal data. Financial institutions must balance the need for thorough verification with strict adherence to privacy and data protection regulations, ensuring that customer information is secure.
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Final Thoughts
Understanding the source of funds is crucial for financial institutions to comply with regulations and prevent financial crimes. By implementing a risk-based approach, utilizing advanced technologies, and conducting regular updates and audits, institutions can effectively verify the source of funds. Additionally, distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate sources, and understanding the difference between source of funds and source of wealth, are essential for comprehensive financial analysis.
Tookitaki offers advanced AML solutions that streamline the source of funds verification process. Our innovative technology ensures compliance and reduces risks associated with financial transactions. Talk to our experts to explore how Tookitaki's AML solutions can enhance your institution's financial security.
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Top AML Scenarios in ASEAN

The Role of AML Software in Compliance

The Role of AML Software in Compliance


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Watching Every Move: How Smart AML Transaction Monitoring is Reinventing Compliance in the Philippines
In the Philippines’ fast-changing financial system, staying ahead of money launderers means thinking faster and smarter than ever before.
The Philippines has rapidly evolved into one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic financial markets. Digital payments, e-wallets, and online remittance platforms have transformed how money moves. But they’ve also created fertile ground for criminals to exploit loopholes and move illicit funds at unprecedented speed.
The result? A new era of financial crime that demands a new kind of vigilance. Traditional compliance systems, built on static rules and manual intervention — can no longer keep up. To detect, prevent, and respond to suspicious activity in real time, financial institutions in the Philippines are turning to AML transaction monitoring software powered by Agentic AI.
This isn’t just an upgrade in technology — it’s a complete reinvention of how compliance works.

The Evolving AML Landscape in the Philippines
Over the past decade, the Philippines has strengthened its anti-money laundering (AML) framework under the guidance of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Both regulators have introduced data-driven, risk-based supervision that demands faster suspicious transaction reporting (STRs) and more proactive monitoring.
Yet, challenges remain. The country continues to face money-laundering threats tied to predicate crimes such as:
- Investment and crypto scams
- Online gambling and cyber fraud
- Terrorism financing through cross-border remittance
- Organised mule networks moving small-value transactions in bulk
The FATF’s ongoing scrutiny of the Philippines has added further urgency for compliance transformation. Local banks and fintechs are now expected to show measurable improvements in real-time detection, reporting accuracy, and data transparency.
For compliance leaders, this isn’t simply about meeting regulations. It’s about restoring trust — building a financial system that citizens, partners, and regulators can rely on.
What AML Transaction Monitoring Really Means
At its core, AML transaction monitoring refers to the continuous analysis of financial transactions to detect patterns that could indicate money laundering, fraud, or other suspicious activity.
Unlike static rules engines, modern systems learn from data. They evaluate not just whether a transaction breaks a threshold — but whether it makes sense given a customer’s behaviour, network, and risk profile.
A modern AML monitoring system typically performs four key tasks:
- Data Integration: Collects and consolidates customer, account, and transaction data from multiple systems.
- Pattern Detection: Analyses transaction sequences to flag anomalies — such as rapid fund transfers, unusual remittance corridors, or inconsistent counterparties.
- Alert Generation: Flags high-risk transactions and assigns risk scores based on behavioural analytics.
- Case Management: Escalates suspicious activity to investigators with contextual evidence.
But what separates smart AML systems from the rest is their ability to adapt — to learn from investigator feedback, detect unseen typologies, and evolve with each new risk.
The Challenge for Philippine Financial Institutions
While most major Philippine banks have some form of automated transaction monitoring, several pain points persist:
- High false positives: Legacy systems trigger excessive alerts for legitimate activity, overwhelming investigators.
- Fragmented data: Disconnected payment, lending, and remittance systems make it difficult to see the full picture.
- Limited investigative capacity: Compliance teams often face resource constraints and manual processes.
- Regulatory pressure: AMLC and BSP expect near real-time STR submissions and audit-ready documentation.
- Emerging typologies: From synthetic identities to mule rings and crypto crossovers, criminals constantly evolve their methods.
To meet these challenges, financial institutions need intelligent AML transaction monitoring — systems that can reason, learn, and explain.
Enter Agentic AI: The Brain of Modern Transaction Monitoring
Traditional AI systems detect patterns. Agentic AI, however, understands purpose. It can analyse intent, connect context, and take autonomous actions to assist investigators.
In the world of AML transaction monitoring, Agentic AI brings three major shifts:
- Contextual Awareness: It understands the “why” behind each transaction, identifying behavioural deviations that static models would miss.
- Dynamic Adaptation: It adjusts to emerging risks in real time, learning from each investigation outcome.
- Interactive Collaboration: Investigators can communicate with the AI using natural language — asking questions, exploring relationships, and receiving guided insights.
This makes Agentic AI the missing link between raw data and human judgment. Instead of replacing analysts, it amplifies their intelligence, handling repetitive tasks and surfacing critical insights at lightning speed.
Tookitaki FinCense: Agentic AI in Action
At the forefront of this evolution is Tookitaki’s FinCense, an end-to-end compliance platform designed to build the Trust Layer for financial institutions.
FinCense combines Agentic AI, federated learning, and collective intelligence to power smarter, explainable, and regulator-ready AML transaction monitoring.
Key Capabilities of FinCense
- Adaptive Risk Models: Continuously refine detection logic based on feedback from investigators.
- Real-Time Detection: Identify abnormal patterns within milliseconds across high-volume payment systems.
- Federated Learning: Enable cross-institutional intelligence sharing without compromising data privacy.
- Scenario-Driven Insights: Leverage typologies and red flags contributed by the AFC Ecosystem to detect emerging threats.
- Explainability: Every decision and alert can be traced back to its logic, ensuring full transparency for auditors and regulators.
FinCense helps Philippine banks transition from reactive monitoring to predictive compliance — detecting risk before it materialises.
Agentic AI Meets Human Expertise: FinMate, the Copilot for Investigators
Monitoring is only half the battle. Once alerts are raised, investigators need to understand context, trace transactions, and document findings. This is where FinMate, Tookitaki’s Agentic AI-powered investigation copilot, steps in.
FinMate acts as a virtual assistant that supports analysts during investigations by:
- Summarising alert histories and previous cases.
- Suggesting possible linkages across accounts, networks, or jurisdictions.
- Drafting narrative summaries for internal and regulatory reporting.
- Learning from investigator corrections to improve future recommendations.
For compliance teams in the Philippines — where staff often juggle high alert volumes and tight deadlines — FinMate helps turn hours of analysis into minutes of decision-making. Together, FinCense and FinMate form an intelligent ecosystem that makes transaction monitoring not just faster, but smarter and fairer.
Core Features of Next-Gen AML Transaction Monitoring
The future of AML transaction monitoring is defined by five core principles that every institution in the Philippines should look for:
1. Dynamic Risk Scoring
Customer risk is no longer static. Modern systems assess behaviour in real time, considering peer groups, network exposure, and transaction context to continuously recalibrate risk scores.
2. Federated Learning for Privacy and Collaboration
Instead of sharing sensitive data, institutions using FinCense participate in federated model training. This allows collective learning from typologies seen across multiple banks — without exposing customer information.
3. Scenario-Based Detection from the AFC Ecosystem
The AFC Ecosystem contributes thousands of expert-curated scenarios and red flags from across Asia. When integrated into FinCense, these scenarios help Philippine banks recognise typologies early — from fraudulent lending apps to cross-border mule pipelines.
4. Explainable AI for Regulatory Confidence
Every alert and score must be defensible. FinCense offers clear audit trails and interpretable AI outputs so regulators can verify how a decision was made — strengthening transparency and accountability.
5. Agentic AI Copilot for Decision Support
FinMate transforms the analyst experience by providing context-aware recommendations, case summaries, and guidance in plain language. It helps investigators focus on judgment rather than data retrieval.

Building a Collaborative Defence: The AFC Ecosystem
While AI technology drives efficiency, collaboration drives resilience.
The AFC Ecosystem, powered by Tookitaki, is a community of AML and fraud experts who contribute real-world typologies, scenarios, and red-flag indicators. These insights are continuously fed into systems like FinCense, enriching transaction monitoring with intelligence gathered from live cases across the region.
Why It Matters for the Philippines
- Cross-border typologies like remittance layering or online gambling proceeds are often first detected in neighbouring markets.
- Shared insights allow Philippine banks to update detection logic pre-emptively, rather than after exposure.
- Compliance teams gain access to Federated Insight Cards, summarising trends and risks from collective learning.
This model of community-powered compliance ensures the Philippines is not only compliant — but one step ahead of evolving financial crime threats.
Case in Focus: Transforming AML Monitoring for a Leading Philippine Bank and Wallet Provider
A leading Philippine financial institution recently partnered with Tookitaki to replace its traditional FICO system with FinCense Transaction Monitoring. The goal: to improve accuracy, reduce false positives, and accelerate compliance agility.
The results were remarkable. Within months of deployment, the bank achieved:
- >90% reduction in false positives
- 10x faster deployment of new scenarios, improving regulatory readiness
- >95% accuracy and higher alert quality
- >75% reduction in alert volume, while processing 1 billion transactions and screening over 40 million customers
These outcomes were powered by FinCense’s intelligent risk models and the AFC Ecosystem’s continuously updated typologies.
Tookitaki’s consultants also played a crucial role — helping the client prioritise regulatory features, train internal teams, and resolve technical gaps. The collaboration demonstrated that the combination of AI innovation and expert enablement can fundamentally transform compliance operations in the Philippines.
From Detection to Prevention: The Road Ahead
The evolution of AML transaction monitoring in the Philippines is shifting from detection-centric to prevention-oriented. With real-time data streams, open banking integrations, and cross-border digital rails, the lines between fraud, AML, and cybersecurity are blurring.
The Next Frontier
- Predictive Monitoring: Using behavioural modelling and external intelligence feeds to forecast potential laundering attempts.
- AI Governance: Embedding ethical, explainable frameworks that satisfy both regulators and internal stakeholders.
- Regulator-Industry Collaboration: AMLC and BSP’s future initiatives may emphasise data interoperability and collective intelligence for ecosystem-wide risk mitigation.
As these changes unfold, Agentic AI will play a critical role — serving as the analytical bridge between human intuition and machine precision.
Conclusion: Smarter Monitoring for a Smarter Future
The Philippines stands at a defining moment in its financial compliance journey. With evolving threats, tighter regulation, and fast-moving digital ecosystems, the success of AML programmes now depends on intelligence — not just rules.
AML transaction monitoring software, powered by Agentic AI, is the new engine driving this transformation. Through Tookitaki’s FinCense and FinMate, Philippine financial institutions can move beyond reactive compliance to proactive prevention — reducing risk, building trust, and strengthening the country’s position as a credible financial hub in Asia.
The message is clear: in the fight against financial crime, those who collaborate and innovate will always stay one step ahead.

Australia’s War on Money Mules: How Data Collaboration Can Stop the Flow
Money mule networks are fuelling a silent epidemic of financial crime across Australia. Stopping them will require not just technology, but true data collaboration.
Introduction
Australia’s financial sector is fighting an invisible war — one that moves through legitimate bank accounts, everyday citizens, and instant payment systems. The enemy? Money mule networks.
Money mules play a crucial role in laundering criminal proceeds. They receive illicit funds, transfer or withdraw them, and help disguise their origin before they vanish into global financial systems. The rise of real-time payments, digital platforms, and cross-border transfers has only made it easier for criminals to recruit and use these intermediaries.
While Australian banks have improved detection systems, siloed intelligence and limited data sharing continue to hinder their collective response. The solution lies in collaborative data intelligence — a model where banks, regulators, and technology partners work together to detect, prevent, and disrupt mule operations faster than ever before.

The Scale of the Problem
Money mule activity has exploded across Australia in recent years. In 2024, AUSTRAC and major banks reported record levels of mule-linked transactions, many tied to romance scams, investment frauds, and cyber-enabled crime syndicates.
Why It’s Growing
- Instant Payments: Platforms like the New Payments Platform (NPP) enable money to move within seconds, reducing the window for intervention.
- Remote Recruitment: Criminals target students, jobseekers, and retirees online through fake job offers and social media scams.
- Cross-Border Complexity: Funds are layered through multiple countries, obscuring their origin.
- Fragmented Intelligence: Each bank sees only a small part of the puzzle.
- Low Awareness: Many mules are unaware they are aiding money laundering until it’s too late.
This combination of speed, deception, and fragmentation makes money mule detection one of Australia’s toughest financial crime challenges.
How Money Mule Networks Operate
Money mule operations often follow a familiar playbook:
- Recruitment: Scammers lure victims through job portals, romance scams, or online ads, promising easy income.
- Onboarding: Victims provide bank details or open new accounts to “receive funds on behalf of a client.”
- Movement: The mule receives illicit funds and transfers them domestically or internationally through instant payment apps.
- Layering: The money is moved through multiple mule accounts to obscure its trail.
- Withdrawal: Funds are withdrawn in cash or converted into crypto assets before disappearing completely.
While each step may seem benign on its own, together they form a sophisticated laundering mechanism that moves millions of dollars daily.
Why Traditional Detection Falls Short
1. Isolated Monitoring
Each bank monitors only its own customers, missing the broader network of mule accounts across institutions.
2. Static Rules
Legacy transaction monitoring relies on rigid thresholds or patterns that criminals easily adapt to avoid.
3. Manual Investigations
Investigators must trace funds across multiple systems, consuming time and resources.
4. Delayed Reporting
By the time suspicious activity is confirmed and reported, the money is often long gone.
5. Lack of Collaboration
Without cross-institution data sharing, identifying the same mule operating across multiple banks is nearly impossible.
To outpace criminal syndicates, banks need systems that can learn, adapt, and collaborate.
The Case for Data Collaboration
Money mule detection is not a competitive issue — it is a shared challenge. Collaborative intelligence between financial institutions, regulators, and technology partners allows the industry to see the full picture.
1. Collective Visibility
By sharing anonymised typologies and behavioural data, institutions can uncover mule networks that span multiple banks or payment providers.
2. Real-Time Detection
When one institution flags a mule pattern, others can act immediately, preventing cross-bank exploitation.
3. Stronger Analytics
Federated learning models allow AI systems to learn from data across multiple organisations without sharing sensitive customer information.
4. Faster Disruption
Collaboration enables coordinated freezing of accounts and joint reporting to AUSTRAC.
5. Regulatory Alignment
AUSTRAC actively encourages industry collaboration under the Fintel Alliance model, making shared intelligence both compliant and strategic.

How Federated Learning Enables Secure Collaboration
Traditional data sharing raises privacy, legal, and competitive concerns. Federated learning addresses this by allowing banks to collaborate without moving their data.
Here’s how it works:
- Each bank trains its AI model locally on its own transaction data.
- The models share only insights and patterns — not raw data — with a central coordinator.
- The combined intelligence is aggregated and redistributed to all participants.
- Each bank’s model becomes smarter from the collective knowledge of the entire network.
This approach ensures data privacy while dramatically improving mule detection accuracy across the ecosystem.
The Power of Collaborative Typologies
The AFC Ecosystem, developed by Tookitaki, provides a real-world example of collaborative intelligence in action.
- Community-Contributed Typologies: Compliance experts from across Asia-Pacific contribute new scenarios of emerging financial crime risks, including money mule patterns.
- Federated Simulation: Banks can test these typologies against their own data to assess exposure.
- Continuous Learning: As more institutions participate, the ecosystem becomes stronger, smarter, and more resilient.
This collective intelligence allows Australian banks to identify previously unseen mule behaviour, from coordinated micro-transactions to cross-border pass-through patterns.
Case Example: Regional Australia Bank
Regional Australia Bank, a community-owned financial institution, represents how smaller banks can lead in modern compliance. By leveraging advanced analytics and participating in collaborative intelligence networks, the bank has strengthened its transaction monitoring framework, improved risk visibility, and enhanced reporting accuracy — all while maintaining alignment with AUSTRAC’s standards.
Its proactive approach to innovation shows that collaboration and technology together can outperform even the most sophisticated laundering networks.
Spotlight: Tookitaki’s FinCense in Action
FinCense, Tookitaki’s next-generation compliance platform, is built for exactly this kind of collaborative intelligence.
- Real-Time Mule Detection: Identifies and blocks high-velocity pass-through transactions across NPP and PayTo.
- Agentic AI Copilot (FinMate): Assists investigators by connecting related mule accounts and generating summary narratives.
- Federated Learning Integration: Learns from anonymised typologies shared through the AFC Ecosystem.
- End-to-End Case Management: Automates reporting to AUSTRAC with full audit trails.
- Privacy-First Design: No sensitive customer data is ever shared externally.
- Continuous Adaptation: The model evolves as new mule typologies and fraud methods emerge.
FinCense gives banks a unified, predictive defence against money mule operations, combining real-time data analysis with human insight.
How Collaboration Helps Break Mule Chains
- Network Analysis: Linking mule accounts across institutions exposes wider laundering webs.
- Cross-Bank Alerts: Shared typologies ensure faster identification of repeat offenders.
- Shared Reporting: Coordinated SMRs strengthen AUSTRAC’s ability to act on time-sensitive intelligence.
- Public-Private Partnerships: Collaboration under frameworks like the Fintel Alliance creates synergy between regulators and institutions.
- Education Campaigns: Joint outreach helps prevent recruitment by raising public awareness.
The result is a system where criminals face diminishing returns and increasing exposure.
Overcoming Collaboration Challenges
While collaboration offers immense benefits, several challenges remain:
- Data Privacy Regulations: Banks must comply with privacy laws when sharing intelligence.
- Standardisation Issues: Different formats and definitions of suspicious activity hinder interoperability.
- Trust and Governance: Institutions must align on how shared intelligence is used and protected.
- Technology Gaps: Smaller institutions may lack the infrastructure to participate effectively.
Solutions like federated learning, anonymised data exchange, and governance frameworks such as AUSTRAC’s Fintel Alliance Charter are helping to bridge these gaps.
The Road Ahead: Toward Collective Defence
The next stage of Australia’s financial crime strategy will focus on collective defence — where financial institutions, regulators, and technology providers act as one coordinated ecosystem.
Future directions include:
- Real-Time Industry Dashboards: AUSTRAC and banks sharing risk heat maps for faster national response.
- Predictive Mule Detection: AI models predicting mule recruitment patterns before accounts are opened.
- Integrated Intelligence Feeds: Combining insights from telecommunications, fintech, and law enforcement data.
- Cross-Border Collaboration: Aligning with regional counterparts in ASEAN for multi-jurisdictional risk detection.
- Public Education Drives: Campaigns to discourage individuals from unknowingly participating in mule operations.
Conclusion
Money mule networks thrive on fragmentation, speed, and invisibility. To defeat them, Australia’s financial institutions must work together — not in isolation.
Collaborative intelligence, powered by technologies like federated learning and Agentic AI, represents the future of effective financial crime prevention. Platforms like Tookitaki’s FinCense are already making this vision a reality, enabling banks to move from reactive detection to proactive disruption.
Regional Australia Bank exemplifies how innovation and cooperation can protect communities and restore trust in the financial system.
Pro tip: The most powerful weapon against money mules isn’t a single algorithm. It’s the collective intelligence of an industry that learns and acts together.

Automated Transaction Monitoring in Singapore: Smarter, Faster, and Built for Today’s Risks
Manual checks won’t catch a real-time scam. But automated transaction monitoring just might.
As Singapore’s financial ecosystem continues to embrace digital payments and instant transfers, the window for spotting suspicious activity is shrinking. Criminals are getting faster, and compliance teams are under pressure to keep up. That’s where automated transaction monitoring steps in — replacing slow, manual processes with real-time intelligence and AI-powered detection.
In this blog, we’ll break down how automated transaction monitoring works, why it’s essential for banks and fintechs in Singapore, and how modern platforms are transforming AML operations from reactive to proactive.

What Is Automated Transaction Monitoring?
Automated transaction monitoring refers to technology systems that analyse customer transactions in real time or near real time to detect signs of money laundering, fraud, or other suspicious activity. These systems work by applying pre-set rules, typologies, or machine learning models to transaction data, triggering alerts when unusual or high-risk patterns are found.
Key use cases:
- Monitoring for structuring and layering
- Detecting transactions with sanctioned jurisdictions
- Identifying mule account flows
- Tracking cross-border movement of illicit funds
- Flagging high-risk behavioural deviations
Why Singapore Needs Automated Monitoring More Than Ever
Singapore’s high-speed payments infrastructure — including PayNow, FAST, and widespread mobile banking — has made it easier than ever for funds to move quickly. This is great for users, but it also creates challenges for compliance teams trying to spot laundering in motion.
Current pressures include:
- Real-time payment schemes that leave no room for slow investigations
- Layering of illicit funds through fintech platforms and e-wallets
- Use of shell companies and nominee directors to hide ownership
- Cross-border mules linked to scams and cyber-enabled fraud
- Regulatory push for faster STR filing and risk-based escalation
Automated transaction monitoring is now essential to meet both operational and regulatory expectations.
How Automated Transaction Monitoring Works
1. Data Ingestion
The system pulls transaction data from core banking systems, payment gateways, and other sources. This may include amount, time, device, channel, location, and more.
2. Rule or Scenario Application
Predefined rules or typologies are applied. For example:
- Flag all transactions above SGD 10,000 from high-risk countries
- Flag multiple small transactions structured to avoid reporting limits
- Alert on sudden account activity after months of dormancy
3. AI/ML Scoring (Optional)
Advanced systems apply machine learning to assess the overall risk of the transaction or customer in real time.
4. Alert Generation
If a transaction matches a risk scenario or exceeds thresholds, the system creates an alert, which flows into case management.
5. Investigation and Action
Analysts review alerts, investigate patterns, and decide on next steps — escalate, file STR, or close as a false positive.
Benefits of Automated Transaction Monitoring
✅ Real-Time Risk Detection
Identify and block suspicious transfers before they’re completed.
✅ Faster Alert Handling
Eliminates the need for manual reviews of every transaction, freeing up analyst time.
✅ Reduced False Positives
Modern systems learn from past decisions to avoid triggering unnecessary alerts.
✅ Compliance Confidence
Supports MAS expectations for timeliness, accuracy, and explainability.
✅ Scalability
Can handle growing transaction volumes without increasing headcount.
Must-Have Features for Singapore-Based Institutions
To be effective in the Singapore market, an automated transaction monitoring system should include:
1. Real-Time Monitoring Engine
Delays mean missed threats. Look for solutions that can process and flag transactions within seconds across digital and physical channels.
2. Dynamic Risk Scoring
Every transaction should be assessed in context, using:
- Historical behaviour
- Customer profile
- External data (e.g., sanctions, adverse media)
3. Scenario-Based Detection
Beyond simple thresholds, the system should support typologies based on real-world money laundering methods in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Common examples:
- Pass-through layering via utility platforms
- QR code-enabled scam payments
- Cross-border fund transfers to newly created shell firms
4. AI and Machine Learning
Advanced systems use AI to:
- Identify previously unknown risk patterns
- Score alerts by urgency and likelihood
- Continuously improve detection quality
5. Investigation Workflows
Once an alert is raised, analysts should be able to:
- View customer and transaction history
- Add notes and attachments
- Escalate or close the alert with audit logs
6. GoAML-Compatible Reporting
For STR filing, the system should:
- Auto-generate STRs based on alert data
- Track internal approvals
- Submit directly to MAS GoAML or export in supported formats
7. Simulation and Tuning
Before pushing new rules live, simulation tools help test how many alerts will be triggered, allowing teams to optimise thresholds.
8. Explainable Outputs
Alerts should include clear reasoning so investigators and auditors can understand why they were triggered.

Challenges with Manual or Legacy Monitoring
Many institutions still rely on outdated or semi-automated systems. These setups often:
- Generate high volumes of false positives
- Cannot detect new laundering typologies
- Delay STR filings due to manual investigation backlogs
- Lack scalability as transaction volume increases
- Struggle with audit readiness and explainability
In a regulatory environment like Singapore’s, these gaps lead to increased risk exposure and operational inefficiencies.
How Tookitaki’s FinCense Platform Enables Automated Transaction Monitoring
Tookitaki’s FinCense is a modern AML solution designed for Singapore’s evolving needs. Its automated transaction monitoring engine combines AI, scenario-based logic, and regional intelligence to deliver precision and speed.
Here’s how it works:
1. Typology-Based Detection with AFC Ecosystem Integration
FinCense leverages over 200 AML typologies contributed by experts across Asia through the AFC Ecosystem.
This helps institutions detect threats like:
- Scam proceeds routed via mules
- Crypto-linked layering attempts
- Synthetic identity fraud patterns
2. Modular AI Agents
FinCense uses an Agentic AI framework with specialised agents for:
- Alert generation
- Prioritisation
- Investigation
- STR filing
Each agent is optimised for accuracy, performance, and transparency.
3. Smart Investigation Tools
FinMate, the AI copilot, supports analysts by:
- Summarising risk factors
- Highlighting key transactions
- Suggesting likely typologies
- Drafting STR summaries in plain language
4. MAS-Ready Compliance Features
FinCense includes:
- GoAML-compatible STR submission
- Audit trails for every alert and decision
- Model testing and validation tools
- Explainable AI that aligns with MAS Veritas principles
5. Simulation and Performance Monitoring
Before changes go live, FinCense allows teams to simulate rule impact, reduce noise, and optimise thresholds — all in a controlled environment.
Success Metrics from Institutions Using FinCense
Banks and fintechs in Singapore using FinCense have seen:
- 65 percent reduction in false positives
- 3x faster investigation workflows
- Improved regulatory audit outcomes
- Stronger typology coverage and detection precision
- Happier, less overworked compliance teams
Checklist: Is Your Transaction Monitoring System Keeping Up?
Ask your team:
- Are you detecting suspicious activity in real time?
- Can your system adapt quickly to new laundering methods?
- Are your alerts prioritised by risk or reviewed manually?
- Do analysts have investigation tools at their fingertips?
- Is your platform audit-ready and MAS-compliant?
- Are STRs automated or still manually compiled?
If you're unsure about two or more of these, it may be time for an upgrade.
Conclusion: Automation Is Not the Future — It’s the Minimum
In Singapore’s high-speed financial environment, automated transaction monitoring is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s the bare minimum for staying compliant, competitive, and customer-trusted.
Solutions like Tookitaki’s FinCense deliver more than automation. They provide intelligence, adaptability, and explainability — all backed by a community of experts contributing real-world insights into the AFC Ecosystem.
If your compliance team is drowning in manual reviews and outdated alerts, now is the time to let automation take the lead.

Watching Every Move: How Smart AML Transaction Monitoring is Reinventing Compliance in the Philippines
In the Philippines’ fast-changing financial system, staying ahead of money launderers means thinking faster and smarter than ever before.
The Philippines has rapidly evolved into one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic financial markets. Digital payments, e-wallets, and online remittance platforms have transformed how money moves. But they’ve also created fertile ground for criminals to exploit loopholes and move illicit funds at unprecedented speed.
The result? A new era of financial crime that demands a new kind of vigilance. Traditional compliance systems, built on static rules and manual intervention — can no longer keep up. To detect, prevent, and respond to suspicious activity in real time, financial institutions in the Philippines are turning to AML transaction monitoring software powered by Agentic AI.
This isn’t just an upgrade in technology — it’s a complete reinvention of how compliance works.

The Evolving AML Landscape in the Philippines
Over the past decade, the Philippines has strengthened its anti-money laundering (AML) framework under the guidance of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Both regulators have introduced data-driven, risk-based supervision that demands faster suspicious transaction reporting (STRs) and more proactive monitoring.
Yet, challenges remain. The country continues to face money-laundering threats tied to predicate crimes such as:
- Investment and crypto scams
- Online gambling and cyber fraud
- Terrorism financing through cross-border remittance
- Organised mule networks moving small-value transactions in bulk
The FATF’s ongoing scrutiny of the Philippines has added further urgency for compliance transformation. Local banks and fintechs are now expected to show measurable improvements in real-time detection, reporting accuracy, and data transparency.
For compliance leaders, this isn’t simply about meeting regulations. It’s about restoring trust — building a financial system that citizens, partners, and regulators can rely on.
What AML Transaction Monitoring Really Means
At its core, AML transaction monitoring refers to the continuous analysis of financial transactions to detect patterns that could indicate money laundering, fraud, or other suspicious activity.
Unlike static rules engines, modern systems learn from data. They evaluate not just whether a transaction breaks a threshold — but whether it makes sense given a customer’s behaviour, network, and risk profile.
A modern AML monitoring system typically performs four key tasks:
- Data Integration: Collects and consolidates customer, account, and transaction data from multiple systems.
- Pattern Detection: Analyses transaction sequences to flag anomalies — such as rapid fund transfers, unusual remittance corridors, or inconsistent counterparties.
- Alert Generation: Flags high-risk transactions and assigns risk scores based on behavioural analytics.
- Case Management: Escalates suspicious activity to investigators with contextual evidence.
But what separates smart AML systems from the rest is their ability to adapt — to learn from investigator feedback, detect unseen typologies, and evolve with each new risk.
The Challenge for Philippine Financial Institutions
While most major Philippine banks have some form of automated transaction monitoring, several pain points persist:
- High false positives: Legacy systems trigger excessive alerts for legitimate activity, overwhelming investigators.
- Fragmented data: Disconnected payment, lending, and remittance systems make it difficult to see the full picture.
- Limited investigative capacity: Compliance teams often face resource constraints and manual processes.
- Regulatory pressure: AMLC and BSP expect near real-time STR submissions and audit-ready documentation.
- Emerging typologies: From synthetic identities to mule rings and crypto crossovers, criminals constantly evolve their methods.
To meet these challenges, financial institutions need intelligent AML transaction monitoring — systems that can reason, learn, and explain.
Enter Agentic AI: The Brain of Modern Transaction Monitoring
Traditional AI systems detect patterns. Agentic AI, however, understands purpose. It can analyse intent, connect context, and take autonomous actions to assist investigators.
In the world of AML transaction monitoring, Agentic AI brings three major shifts:
- Contextual Awareness: It understands the “why” behind each transaction, identifying behavioural deviations that static models would miss.
- Dynamic Adaptation: It adjusts to emerging risks in real time, learning from each investigation outcome.
- Interactive Collaboration: Investigators can communicate with the AI using natural language — asking questions, exploring relationships, and receiving guided insights.
This makes Agentic AI the missing link between raw data and human judgment. Instead of replacing analysts, it amplifies their intelligence, handling repetitive tasks and surfacing critical insights at lightning speed.
Tookitaki FinCense: Agentic AI in Action
At the forefront of this evolution is Tookitaki’s FinCense, an end-to-end compliance platform designed to build the Trust Layer for financial institutions.
FinCense combines Agentic AI, federated learning, and collective intelligence to power smarter, explainable, and regulator-ready AML transaction monitoring.
Key Capabilities of FinCense
- Adaptive Risk Models: Continuously refine detection logic based on feedback from investigators.
- Real-Time Detection: Identify abnormal patterns within milliseconds across high-volume payment systems.
- Federated Learning: Enable cross-institutional intelligence sharing without compromising data privacy.
- Scenario-Driven Insights: Leverage typologies and red flags contributed by the AFC Ecosystem to detect emerging threats.
- Explainability: Every decision and alert can be traced back to its logic, ensuring full transparency for auditors and regulators.
FinCense helps Philippine banks transition from reactive monitoring to predictive compliance — detecting risk before it materialises.
Agentic AI Meets Human Expertise: FinMate, the Copilot for Investigators
Monitoring is only half the battle. Once alerts are raised, investigators need to understand context, trace transactions, and document findings. This is where FinMate, Tookitaki’s Agentic AI-powered investigation copilot, steps in.
FinMate acts as a virtual assistant that supports analysts during investigations by:
- Summarising alert histories and previous cases.
- Suggesting possible linkages across accounts, networks, or jurisdictions.
- Drafting narrative summaries for internal and regulatory reporting.
- Learning from investigator corrections to improve future recommendations.
For compliance teams in the Philippines — where staff often juggle high alert volumes and tight deadlines — FinMate helps turn hours of analysis into minutes of decision-making. Together, FinCense and FinMate form an intelligent ecosystem that makes transaction monitoring not just faster, but smarter and fairer.
Core Features of Next-Gen AML Transaction Monitoring
The future of AML transaction monitoring is defined by five core principles that every institution in the Philippines should look for:
1. Dynamic Risk Scoring
Customer risk is no longer static. Modern systems assess behaviour in real time, considering peer groups, network exposure, and transaction context to continuously recalibrate risk scores.
2. Federated Learning for Privacy and Collaboration
Instead of sharing sensitive data, institutions using FinCense participate in federated model training. This allows collective learning from typologies seen across multiple banks — without exposing customer information.
3. Scenario-Based Detection from the AFC Ecosystem
The AFC Ecosystem contributes thousands of expert-curated scenarios and red flags from across Asia. When integrated into FinCense, these scenarios help Philippine banks recognise typologies early — from fraudulent lending apps to cross-border mule pipelines.
4. Explainable AI for Regulatory Confidence
Every alert and score must be defensible. FinCense offers clear audit trails and interpretable AI outputs so regulators can verify how a decision was made — strengthening transparency and accountability.
5. Agentic AI Copilot for Decision Support
FinMate transforms the analyst experience by providing context-aware recommendations, case summaries, and guidance in plain language. It helps investigators focus on judgment rather than data retrieval.

Building a Collaborative Defence: The AFC Ecosystem
While AI technology drives efficiency, collaboration drives resilience.
The AFC Ecosystem, powered by Tookitaki, is a community of AML and fraud experts who contribute real-world typologies, scenarios, and red-flag indicators. These insights are continuously fed into systems like FinCense, enriching transaction monitoring with intelligence gathered from live cases across the region.
Why It Matters for the Philippines
- Cross-border typologies like remittance layering or online gambling proceeds are often first detected in neighbouring markets.
- Shared insights allow Philippine banks to update detection logic pre-emptively, rather than after exposure.
- Compliance teams gain access to Federated Insight Cards, summarising trends and risks from collective learning.
This model of community-powered compliance ensures the Philippines is not only compliant — but one step ahead of evolving financial crime threats.
Case in Focus: Transforming AML Monitoring for a Leading Philippine Bank and Wallet Provider
A leading Philippine financial institution recently partnered with Tookitaki to replace its traditional FICO system with FinCense Transaction Monitoring. The goal: to improve accuracy, reduce false positives, and accelerate compliance agility.
The results were remarkable. Within months of deployment, the bank achieved:
- >90% reduction in false positives
- 10x faster deployment of new scenarios, improving regulatory readiness
- >95% accuracy and higher alert quality
- >75% reduction in alert volume, while processing 1 billion transactions and screening over 40 million customers
These outcomes were powered by FinCense’s intelligent risk models and the AFC Ecosystem’s continuously updated typologies.
Tookitaki’s consultants also played a crucial role — helping the client prioritise regulatory features, train internal teams, and resolve technical gaps. The collaboration demonstrated that the combination of AI innovation and expert enablement can fundamentally transform compliance operations in the Philippines.
From Detection to Prevention: The Road Ahead
The evolution of AML transaction monitoring in the Philippines is shifting from detection-centric to prevention-oriented. With real-time data streams, open banking integrations, and cross-border digital rails, the lines between fraud, AML, and cybersecurity are blurring.
The Next Frontier
- Predictive Monitoring: Using behavioural modelling and external intelligence feeds to forecast potential laundering attempts.
- AI Governance: Embedding ethical, explainable frameworks that satisfy both regulators and internal stakeholders.
- Regulator-Industry Collaboration: AMLC and BSP’s future initiatives may emphasise data interoperability and collective intelligence for ecosystem-wide risk mitigation.
As these changes unfold, Agentic AI will play a critical role — serving as the analytical bridge between human intuition and machine precision.
Conclusion: Smarter Monitoring for a Smarter Future
The Philippines stands at a defining moment in its financial compliance journey. With evolving threats, tighter regulation, and fast-moving digital ecosystems, the success of AML programmes now depends on intelligence — not just rules.
AML transaction monitoring software, powered by Agentic AI, is the new engine driving this transformation. Through Tookitaki’s FinCense and FinMate, Philippine financial institutions can move beyond reactive compliance to proactive prevention — reducing risk, building trust, and strengthening the country’s position as a credible financial hub in Asia.
The message is clear: in the fight against financial crime, those who collaborate and innovate will always stay one step ahead.

Australia’s War on Money Mules: How Data Collaboration Can Stop the Flow
Money mule networks are fuelling a silent epidemic of financial crime across Australia. Stopping them will require not just technology, but true data collaboration.
Introduction
Australia’s financial sector is fighting an invisible war — one that moves through legitimate bank accounts, everyday citizens, and instant payment systems. The enemy? Money mule networks.
Money mules play a crucial role in laundering criminal proceeds. They receive illicit funds, transfer or withdraw them, and help disguise their origin before they vanish into global financial systems. The rise of real-time payments, digital platforms, and cross-border transfers has only made it easier for criminals to recruit and use these intermediaries.
While Australian banks have improved detection systems, siloed intelligence and limited data sharing continue to hinder their collective response. The solution lies in collaborative data intelligence — a model where banks, regulators, and technology partners work together to detect, prevent, and disrupt mule operations faster than ever before.

The Scale of the Problem
Money mule activity has exploded across Australia in recent years. In 2024, AUSTRAC and major banks reported record levels of mule-linked transactions, many tied to romance scams, investment frauds, and cyber-enabled crime syndicates.
Why It’s Growing
- Instant Payments: Platforms like the New Payments Platform (NPP) enable money to move within seconds, reducing the window for intervention.
- Remote Recruitment: Criminals target students, jobseekers, and retirees online through fake job offers and social media scams.
- Cross-Border Complexity: Funds are layered through multiple countries, obscuring their origin.
- Fragmented Intelligence: Each bank sees only a small part of the puzzle.
- Low Awareness: Many mules are unaware they are aiding money laundering until it’s too late.
This combination of speed, deception, and fragmentation makes money mule detection one of Australia’s toughest financial crime challenges.
How Money Mule Networks Operate
Money mule operations often follow a familiar playbook:
- Recruitment: Scammers lure victims through job portals, romance scams, or online ads, promising easy income.
- Onboarding: Victims provide bank details or open new accounts to “receive funds on behalf of a client.”
- Movement: The mule receives illicit funds and transfers them domestically or internationally through instant payment apps.
- Layering: The money is moved through multiple mule accounts to obscure its trail.
- Withdrawal: Funds are withdrawn in cash or converted into crypto assets before disappearing completely.
While each step may seem benign on its own, together they form a sophisticated laundering mechanism that moves millions of dollars daily.
Why Traditional Detection Falls Short
1. Isolated Monitoring
Each bank monitors only its own customers, missing the broader network of mule accounts across institutions.
2. Static Rules
Legacy transaction monitoring relies on rigid thresholds or patterns that criminals easily adapt to avoid.
3. Manual Investigations
Investigators must trace funds across multiple systems, consuming time and resources.
4. Delayed Reporting
By the time suspicious activity is confirmed and reported, the money is often long gone.
5. Lack of Collaboration
Without cross-institution data sharing, identifying the same mule operating across multiple banks is nearly impossible.
To outpace criminal syndicates, banks need systems that can learn, adapt, and collaborate.
The Case for Data Collaboration
Money mule detection is not a competitive issue — it is a shared challenge. Collaborative intelligence between financial institutions, regulators, and technology partners allows the industry to see the full picture.
1. Collective Visibility
By sharing anonymised typologies and behavioural data, institutions can uncover mule networks that span multiple banks or payment providers.
2. Real-Time Detection
When one institution flags a mule pattern, others can act immediately, preventing cross-bank exploitation.
3. Stronger Analytics
Federated learning models allow AI systems to learn from data across multiple organisations without sharing sensitive customer information.
4. Faster Disruption
Collaboration enables coordinated freezing of accounts and joint reporting to AUSTRAC.
5. Regulatory Alignment
AUSTRAC actively encourages industry collaboration under the Fintel Alliance model, making shared intelligence both compliant and strategic.

How Federated Learning Enables Secure Collaboration
Traditional data sharing raises privacy, legal, and competitive concerns. Federated learning addresses this by allowing banks to collaborate without moving their data.
Here’s how it works:
- Each bank trains its AI model locally on its own transaction data.
- The models share only insights and patterns — not raw data — with a central coordinator.
- The combined intelligence is aggregated and redistributed to all participants.
- Each bank’s model becomes smarter from the collective knowledge of the entire network.
This approach ensures data privacy while dramatically improving mule detection accuracy across the ecosystem.
The Power of Collaborative Typologies
The AFC Ecosystem, developed by Tookitaki, provides a real-world example of collaborative intelligence in action.
- Community-Contributed Typologies: Compliance experts from across Asia-Pacific contribute new scenarios of emerging financial crime risks, including money mule patterns.
- Federated Simulation: Banks can test these typologies against their own data to assess exposure.
- Continuous Learning: As more institutions participate, the ecosystem becomes stronger, smarter, and more resilient.
This collective intelligence allows Australian banks to identify previously unseen mule behaviour, from coordinated micro-transactions to cross-border pass-through patterns.
Case Example: Regional Australia Bank
Regional Australia Bank, a community-owned financial institution, represents how smaller banks can lead in modern compliance. By leveraging advanced analytics and participating in collaborative intelligence networks, the bank has strengthened its transaction monitoring framework, improved risk visibility, and enhanced reporting accuracy — all while maintaining alignment with AUSTRAC’s standards.
Its proactive approach to innovation shows that collaboration and technology together can outperform even the most sophisticated laundering networks.
Spotlight: Tookitaki’s FinCense in Action
FinCense, Tookitaki’s next-generation compliance platform, is built for exactly this kind of collaborative intelligence.
- Real-Time Mule Detection: Identifies and blocks high-velocity pass-through transactions across NPP and PayTo.
- Agentic AI Copilot (FinMate): Assists investigators by connecting related mule accounts and generating summary narratives.
- Federated Learning Integration: Learns from anonymised typologies shared through the AFC Ecosystem.
- End-to-End Case Management: Automates reporting to AUSTRAC with full audit trails.
- Privacy-First Design: No sensitive customer data is ever shared externally.
- Continuous Adaptation: The model evolves as new mule typologies and fraud methods emerge.
FinCense gives banks a unified, predictive defence against money mule operations, combining real-time data analysis with human insight.
How Collaboration Helps Break Mule Chains
- Network Analysis: Linking mule accounts across institutions exposes wider laundering webs.
- Cross-Bank Alerts: Shared typologies ensure faster identification of repeat offenders.
- Shared Reporting: Coordinated SMRs strengthen AUSTRAC’s ability to act on time-sensitive intelligence.
- Public-Private Partnerships: Collaboration under frameworks like the Fintel Alliance creates synergy between regulators and institutions.
- Education Campaigns: Joint outreach helps prevent recruitment by raising public awareness.
The result is a system where criminals face diminishing returns and increasing exposure.
Overcoming Collaboration Challenges
While collaboration offers immense benefits, several challenges remain:
- Data Privacy Regulations: Banks must comply with privacy laws when sharing intelligence.
- Standardisation Issues: Different formats and definitions of suspicious activity hinder interoperability.
- Trust and Governance: Institutions must align on how shared intelligence is used and protected.
- Technology Gaps: Smaller institutions may lack the infrastructure to participate effectively.
Solutions like federated learning, anonymised data exchange, and governance frameworks such as AUSTRAC’s Fintel Alliance Charter are helping to bridge these gaps.
The Road Ahead: Toward Collective Defence
The next stage of Australia’s financial crime strategy will focus on collective defence — where financial institutions, regulators, and technology providers act as one coordinated ecosystem.
Future directions include:
- Real-Time Industry Dashboards: AUSTRAC and banks sharing risk heat maps for faster national response.
- Predictive Mule Detection: AI models predicting mule recruitment patterns before accounts are opened.
- Integrated Intelligence Feeds: Combining insights from telecommunications, fintech, and law enforcement data.
- Cross-Border Collaboration: Aligning with regional counterparts in ASEAN for multi-jurisdictional risk detection.
- Public Education Drives: Campaigns to discourage individuals from unknowingly participating in mule operations.
Conclusion
Money mule networks thrive on fragmentation, speed, and invisibility. To defeat them, Australia’s financial institutions must work together — not in isolation.
Collaborative intelligence, powered by technologies like federated learning and Agentic AI, represents the future of effective financial crime prevention. Platforms like Tookitaki’s FinCense are already making this vision a reality, enabling banks to move from reactive detection to proactive disruption.
Regional Australia Bank exemplifies how innovation and cooperation can protect communities and restore trust in the financial system.
Pro tip: The most powerful weapon against money mules isn’t a single algorithm. It’s the collective intelligence of an industry that learns and acts together.

Automated Transaction Monitoring in Singapore: Smarter, Faster, and Built for Today’s Risks
Manual checks won’t catch a real-time scam. But automated transaction monitoring just might.
As Singapore’s financial ecosystem continues to embrace digital payments and instant transfers, the window for spotting suspicious activity is shrinking. Criminals are getting faster, and compliance teams are under pressure to keep up. That’s where automated transaction monitoring steps in — replacing slow, manual processes with real-time intelligence and AI-powered detection.
In this blog, we’ll break down how automated transaction monitoring works, why it’s essential for banks and fintechs in Singapore, and how modern platforms are transforming AML operations from reactive to proactive.

What Is Automated Transaction Monitoring?
Automated transaction monitoring refers to technology systems that analyse customer transactions in real time or near real time to detect signs of money laundering, fraud, or other suspicious activity. These systems work by applying pre-set rules, typologies, or machine learning models to transaction data, triggering alerts when unusual or high-risk patterns are found.
Key use cases:
- Monitoring for structuring and layering
- Detecting transactions with sanctioned jurisdictions
- Identifying mule account flows
- Tracking cross-border movement of illicit funds
- Flagging high-risk behavioural deviations
Why Singapore Needs Automated Monitoring More Than Ever
Singapore’s high-speed payments infrastructure — including PayNow, FAST, and widespread mobile banking — has made it easier than ever for funds to move quickly. This is great for users, but it also creates challenges for compliance teams trying to spot laundering in motion.
Current pressures include:
- Real-time payment schemes that leave no room for slow investigations
- Layering of illicit funds through fintech platforms and e-wallets
- Use of shell companies and nominee directors to hide ownership
- Cross-border mules linked to scams and cyber-enabled fraud
- Regulatory push for faster STR filing and risk-based escalation
Automated transaction monitoring is now essential to meet both operational and regulatory expectations.
How Automated Transaction Monitoring Works
1. Data Ingestion
The system pulls transaction data from core banking systems, payment gateways, and other sources. This may include amount, time, device, channel, location, and more.
2. Rule or Scenario Application
Predefined rules or typologies are applied. For example:
- Flag all transactions above SGD 10,000 from high-risk countries
- Flag multiple small transactions structured to avoid reporting limits
- Alert on sudden account activity after months of dormancy
3. AI/ML Scoring (Optional)
Advanced systems apply machine learning to assess the overall risk of the transaction or customer in real time.
4. Alert Generation
If a transaction matches a risk scenario or exceeds thresholds, the system creates an alert, which flows into case management.
5. Investigation and Action
Analysts review alerts, investigate patterns, and decide on next steps — escalate, file STR, or close as a false positive.
Benefits of Automated Transaction Monitoring
✅ Real-Time Risk Detection
Identify and block suspicious transfers before they’re completed.
✅ Faster Alert Handling
Eliminates the need for manual reviews of every transaction, freeing up analyst time.
✅ Reduced False Positives
Modern systems learn from past decisions to avoid triggering unnecessary alerts.
✅ Compliance Confidence
Supports MAS expectations for timeliness, accuracy, and explainability.
✅ Scalability
Can handle growing transaction volumes without increasing headcount.
Must-Have Features for Singapore-Based Institutions
To be effective in the Singapore market, an automated transaction monitoring system should include:
1. Real-Time Monitoring Engine
Delays mean missed threats. Look for solutions that can process and flag transactions within seconds across digital and physical channels.
2. Dynamic Risk Scoring
Every transaction should be assessed in context, using:
- Historical behaviour
- Customer profile
- External data (e.g., sanctions, adverse media)
3. Scenario-Based Detection
Beyond simple thresholds, the system should support typologies based on real-world money laundering methods in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Common examples:
- Pass-through layering via utility platforms
- QR code-enabled scam payments
- Cross-border fund transfers to newly created shell firms
4. AI and Machine Learning
Advanced systems use AI to:
- Identify previously unknown risk patterns
- Score alerts by urgency and likelihood
- Continuously improve detection quality
5. Investigation Workflows
Once an alert is raised, analysts should be able to:
- View customer and transaction history
- Add notes and attachments
- Escalate or close the alert with audit logs
6. GoAML-Compatible Reporting
For STR filing, the system should:
- Auto-generate STRs based on alert data
- Track internal approvals
- Submit directly to MAS GoAML or export in supported formats
7. Simulation and Tuning
Before pushing new rules live, simulation tools help test how many alerts will be triggered, allowing teams to optimise thresholds.
8. Explainable Outputs
Alerts should include clear reasoning so investigators and auditors can understand why they were triggered.

Challenges with Manual or Legacy Monitoring
Many institutions still rely on outdated or semi-automated systems. These setups often:
- Generate high volumes of false positives
- Cannot detect new laundering typologies
- Delay STR filings due to manual investigation backlogs
- Lack scalability as transaction volume increases
- Struggle with audit readiness and explainability
In a regulatory environment like Singapore’s, these gaps lead to increased risk exposure and operational inefficiencies.
How Tookitaki’s FinCense Platform Enables Automated Transaction Monitoring
Tookitaki’s FinCense is a modern AML solution designed for Singapore’s evolving needs. Its automated transaction monitoring engine combines AI, scenario-based logic, and regional intelligence to deliver precision and speed.
Here’s how it works:
1. Typology-Based Detection with AFC Ecosystem Integration
FinCense leverages over 200 AML typologies contributed by experts across Asia through the AFC Ecosystem.
This helps institutions detect threats like:
- Scam proceeds routed via mules
- Crypto-linked layering attempts
- Synthetic identity fraud patterns
2. Modular AI Agents
FinCense uses an Agentic AI framework with specialised agents for:
- Alert generation
- Prioritisation
- Investigation
- STR filing
Each agent is optimised for accuracy, performance, and transparency.
3. Smart Investigation Tools
FinMate, the AI copilot, supports analysts by:
- Summarising risk factors
- Highlighting key transactions
- Suggesting likely typologies
- Drafting STR summaries in plain language
4. MAS-Ready Compliance Features
FinCense includes:
- GoAML-compatible STR submission
- Audit trails for every alert and decision
- Model testing and validation tools
- Explainable AI that aligns with MAS Veritas principles
5. Simulation and Performance Monitoring
Before changes go live, FinCense allows teams to simulate rule impact, reduce noise, and optimise thresholds — all in a controlled environment.
Success Metrics from Institutions Using FinCense
Banks and fintechs in Singapore using FinCense have seen:
- 65 percent reduction in false positives
- 3x faster investigation workflows
- Improved regulatory audit outcomes
- Stronger typology coverage and detection precision
- Happier, less overworked compliance teams
Checklist: Is Your Transaction Monitoring System Keeping Up?
Ask your team:
- Are you detecting suspicious activity in real time?
- Can your system adapt quickly to new laundering methods?
- Are your alerts prioritised by risk or reviewed manually?
- Do analysts have investigation tools at their fingertips?
- Is your platform audit-ready and MAS-compliant?
- Are STRs automated or still manually compiled?
If you're unsure about two or more of these, it may be time for an upgrade.
Conclusion: Automation Is Not the Future — It’s the Minimum
In Singapore’s high-speed financial environment, automated transaction monitoring is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s the bare minimum for staying compliant, competitive, and customer-trusted.
Solutions like Tookitaki’s FinCense deliver more than automation. They provide intelligence, adaptability, and explainability — all backed by a community of experts contributing real-world insights into the AFC Ecosystem.
If your compliance team is drowning in manual reviews and outdated alerts, now is the time to let automation take the lead.


