Singapore’s plans to expand COSMIC, its collaborative financial crime information-sharing platform, are bringing the strength of banks’ internal anti-money laundering (AML) systems into focus. As participation grows, institutions will need reliable data, effective detection tools and robust compliance processes to ensure that shared intelligence helps uncover criminal networks rather than adding to existing investigation workloads.
RegTech provider ZIGRAM argues that COSMIC’s effectiveness depends on the quality of the screening, transaction monitoring and entity risk assessment systems supporting it. Inadequate customer data and weak detection capabilities could limit the value of cross-bank intelligence sharing, making it harder for institutions to distinguish meaningful financial crime indicators from low-value alerts.
COSMIC, short for Collaborative Sharing of ML/TF Information & Cases, is Singapore’s first centralised digital platform enabling prescribed financial institutions to exchange specified customer risk information. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched the platform on 1 April 2024 under Part 4A of the Financial Services and Markets (Amendment) Act 2023. Its initial participants were DBS, OCBC, UOB, Citibank, HSBC and Standard Chartered, with information sharing focused on the misuse of legal persons, the abuse of trade finance and proliferation financing.
The initiative addresses a longstanding challenge in AML compliance: financial institutions typically have visibility only into the accounts, transactions and business relationships held within their own systems. A company operating across several banks may therefore appear relatively low-risk when assessed by each institution individually. Connecting relevant information can help reveal suspicious trade flows, shell companies and links between counterparties that might otherwise remain undetected.
Participating institutions can request information from other banks, proactively disclose relevant risk details or publish specified information to platform members after filing a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) and exiting a customer relationship. However, sharing is subject to defined thresholds and restrictions. Disclosures must support anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism or countering proliferation financing, and cannot be used for marketing or credit decisions.
MAS issued its Guidelines to Notice FSM-N02 on 18 October 2024, outlining expectations for governance, internal approvals, audit trails, role-based access and data quality. Outsourcing provisions followed on 11 December 2024. False or reckless disclosures can result in fines and imprisonment, while breaches of MAS notices can attract fines of up to SGD 1m.
COSMIC’s first-year results indicate the potential benefits of cross-institution intelligence sharing. During its first 12 months, the platform contributed to 461 additional STRs covering transactions worth more than SGD 1.6bn. Participating banks also closed 1,152 suspicious accounts and identified two illicit networks that institution-level monitoring had missed.
Singapore is now preparing to broaden the initiative. The country’s FATF/APG Mutual Evaluation Report, published on 6 May 2026, recognised COSMIC and recommended extending it to additional financial institutions and risk areas. The Ministry of Home Affairs has also confirmed plans to bring more banks into the platform, with selected non-bank financial institutions potentially joining in the future.
A wider participant network could improve visibility into suspicious activity spanning multiple institutions, but it would also increase the need for consistent data standards, secure information handling and effective analytical capabilities. More participants alone will not guarantee better detection if the information being shared is incomplete, inaccurate or poorly assessed.
The calibration of risk thresholds presents another challenge. Criteria that are too broad could generate excessive low-value alerts and place additional pressure on compliance teams. Overly restrictive thresholds, meanwhile, could allow suspicious activity to go undetected. Differences in data quality, risk appetites and monitoring systems across institutions further complicate the process.
COSMIC also does not replace existing customer due diligence, beneficial ownership analysis or transaction monitoring obligations. Each institution remains responsible for its own AML controls and must independently assess the risks associated with its customers. This makes the quality and integration of internal compliance systems central to the platform’s wider effectiveness.
ZIGRAM identifies name screening, transaction monitoring, entity resolution and network analysis as important capabilities for identifying relevant activity before information is shared and investigating intelligence received from other institutions. Its solutions include PreScreening.io for screening, Transact Comply for transaction monitoring and Entity Hero for entity risk assessment and ownership analysis.
As Singapore moves towards a more connected approach to financial crime detection, banks will need to ensure their compliance systems can produce accurate, actionable intelligence while meeting strict governance requirements. COSMIC creates an opportunity to identify risks that might remain hidden within individual institutions, but its long-term value will depend on the strength of the AML controls behind the platform.
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
