Germany-based fintech Hawk AI , which supports banks and financial service providers in the fight against financial crime, has announced raising a further EUR 17 million in a new Series B financing round. In 2018, the year Hawk AI was founded, the fintech raised USD 10 million in a Series A round for further product development and to prepare for an expansion to the United States.

Currently, Hawk AI is operating in more than 60 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America. Further expansion and product development According to HawkAI, the money will now be used to further accelerate product development and global expansion. The funding round is led by Sands Capital and co-funded by new and existing investors including DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital, and Picus Capital.

Hawk AI’s offers Hawk AI supports banks and financial service providers in combatting financial crime. The company's platform, built on a flexible cloud infrastructure and supported by artificial intelligence, detects suspicious cases while drastically reducing the false alarm rate. The fintech offers payment screening, meaning that users’ counterparties can be screened against sanctions and country lists in real-time.

Hawk AI’s name-matching algorithms normalise data and identify sanctions risks, stopping transactions in less than 150ms. This offer works with self-service configuration meaning that users can fine-tune the algorithm and conduct what-if analyses based on real data in a sandbox.   The fintech’s transaction monitoring With the fintech’s features, users can monitor any transaction for red flags using a set of rules in combination with behavioural analytics.

Customers can choose from a diverse set of red flags and suspicious activity scenarios such as smurfing, round amounts, or dormancy. Thresholds can be applied based on risk, for example, by customer group or segment to create individualised transaction monitoring. Hawk AI applies rules and AI-based alerts in real-time to effectively tackle instant payments or more immediate case investigation work.

Partnership with Know Your Customer In October 2022, HawkAI partnered with regtech provider Know Your Customer to improve financial crime compliance in fintech. The partnership aimed to enable clients’ access to a comprehensive and integrated offering that centralises AML programme’s elements through a combination of Know Your Customer’s digital onboarding and business KYC solutions and Hawk AI’s transaction monitoring capabilities. The partnership was targeted at helping compliance teams embrace a more efficient conception of financial crime, as opposed to having compliance functions divided, something that is costly from an operational standpoint and can leave vulnerabilities ready to be exploited by criminals.

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