AI is rapidly reshaping the financial services landscape, and few areas illustrate this transformation better than financial crime compliance.
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) agents by banks and financial institutions has reached a new level of maturity, giving rise to a second generation of intelligent systems that can reason, collaborate, and learn from both humans and one another, claims Workfusion.
In a recent episode of the What the FinTech Podcast, FinTech Futures editor Paul Hindle spoke with WorkFusion vice president of financial crime compliance David Caruso about this evolution. Their discussion explored how AI agents are transforming compliance operations, improving efficiency, and changing the way investigations are conducted across the sector.
According to Caruso, the last two years have seen a remarkable shift in how banks view AI technologies. “We know that because we’re in the business of developing AI agents and we have a lot of clients, we have a lot of customers, and we have no trouble having conversations with banks of all sizes all over the world who have shown real interest in it,” he said. WorkFusion currently serves 10 of the world’s top 20 banks, demonstrating how far the industry’s acceptance of AI in financial crime compliance has come.
This shift has been driven largely by improvements in the technology itself. The first generation of AI agents brought significant efficiency gains to anti-money laundering (AML) operations, helping compliance teams to organise, analyse, and present large volumes of data more effectively. These agents have streamlined the creation of key compliance artefacts and reduced the manual burden on teams.
Now, the sector is entering a new phase with the emergence of second-generation AI agents—tools capable of investigative reasoning. As Caruso explained, these agents don’t just process data; they interpret it. “Are there indications that these transactions are out of the norm for this customer? Is that indicative of just a change in their business or lifestyle, or is that indicative of perhaps financial crime, something nefarious that we need to look at?” he said.
WorkFusion’s latest AI agents can analyse thousands of data points and narrow them down to just a few items that warrant human review. This can reduce repetitive manual tasks by as much as 80%, allowing analysts to focus their time on investigating high-risk alerts rather than sifting through noise.
Collaboration is another defining feature of this new generation. WorkFusion gives each of its AI agents a name—Tara, Evelyn, Evan, Isaac, Kayla, and Edward—to reflect their specialised roles and their ability to work together. Just like human colleagues, these agents communicate and share information to ensure that compliance processes are fully covered across transaction screening, sanctions checks, adverse media monitoring, and customer due diligence.
Each AI agent is designed to complement human expertise. Caruso emphasised that while the agents can efficiently narrow down information to the most suspicious items, people remain essential to decision-making. “He” explained that agents like Edward, for instance, assist analysts in enhanced due diligence by automating data extraction, analysing transaction patterns, and using natural language processing (NLP) to summarise media reports and corporate filings. Generative AI then produces written summaries and visualisations, helping human investigators make faster and more informed decisions.
This type of collaboration between people and machines defines the future of financial crime compliance. By combining human judgement with AI’s analytical power, institutions can manage growing regulatory demands more effectively while reducing operational strain.
As WorkFusion’s progress shows, second-generation AI agents aren’t replacing people—they’re augmenting them, freeing human talent to focus on complex, high-value investigations that strengthen the integrity of the global financial system.
Copyright © 2025 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
