SymphonyAI’s AI-powered SRI Agents have helped a major US financial institution overhaul its sanctions compliance operations, slashing manual effort by 90% and reducing average alert review times tenfold in a successful proof of concept.
The institution had long been contending with the operational strain of processing enormous daily transaction volumes, SymphonyAI said.
Its existing screening system used broad name-matching logic that routinely produced high volumes of false positives, creating a mounting backlog for compliance teams.
Resolving each alert was an exhaustive, resource-heavy exercise, with investigators required to cross-reference transaction details, conduct entity background checks, consult historical records, carry out web research, and respond to Requests for Information (RFIs). The process frequently exceeded 100 minutes per case.
Compounding matters further, analysts were also tasked with reviewing potentially dozens of media articles for every sanctions hit, manually verifying whether flagged content pertained to the correct individual or entity.
SymphonyAI was brought in to demonstrate how its Symphony Risk Intelligence (SRI) platform could address these pain points through its SRI Agents functionality.
In a structured proof of concept (PoC), agents were trained on the client’s own internal policies and procedures, equipping them to autonomously handle several key tasks. Automated entity resolution allowed agents to analyse all relevant transaction participants, including senders, receivers, and sanctions matches, by drawing on publicly available information. Agents also carried out name disambiguation, relationship analysis, and background verification to filter out false positives. In cases where sufficient evidence could not be established, agents escalated alerts for human review, providing detailed justifications that mapped directly to the client’s compliance framework.
The PoC produced compelling results across every measured metric. False positives were reduced by 99%, with agents autonomously matching and discounting sanctions hits. Manual effort fell by 90%, and average alert review times dropped by a factor of ten. Agreement between agent and investigator adjudication decisions was recorded at above 98%.
To validate its scalability, 50 SRI Agents were deployed simultaneously, processing in excess of 300 alerts per hour and saving thousands of investigator hours in the process. Work that had previously spanned multiple days was completed within minutes. Every adjudication was accompanied by a thorough, consistently formatted report, incorporating linked sources, relevant policy references, and clear rationale to support investigator assessments.
The institution is exploring how agent-driven automation can be extended across a wider range of compliance workflows, with the longer-term ambition of progressing towards what SymphonyAI terms Always-on Compliance.
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