We’ve just published the latest editions of Celent’s anti-money laundering vendor evaluation reports. After going through the 16 transaction monitoring solutions and 20 watchlist screening solutions profiled in these reports, it’s a good time to make some observations about the state of play in AML technology.

Rising compliance costs, operational bottlenecks, the outsized burden of false positives, and other operational issues are challenging both financial institutions and AML vendors. Just in time, AI and robotics are emerging to help with these formerly intractable challenges. Regtech startups are moving quickly to deploy next-gen technology in a bid to compete with incumbent AML software vendors.

Seeking to cut these upstarts off at the pass, incumbent vendors are rushing to build out their own advanced tech. Indeed, despite the continual emergence of new players and the potential challenge posed by regtech, the incumbents seem to be holding steady.