With “source of wealth” (SoW) tests becoming increasingly important in the fight against money laundering, using technology to help in the process is speeding it up. Slow onboarding times give the process fresh urgency.

Bank of Singapore has rolled out an agentic AI-powered tool to automate a major part of the know-your-customer (KYC) due diligence process – verifying the legitimacy of clients’ wealth and transactions.

The bank’s Source of Wealth Assistant (SOWA) enables relationship managers to generate consistent and regulatory-aligned source of wealth reports far faster than before – slashing the turnaround time from around 10 days to just one hour, it said in a statement last Friday.

With banks and other financial institutions worldwide reporting that onboarding abandonment is averaging around 10 per cent, with more firms suffering this problem, the stakes are high. This publication has spoken to a variety of firms, finding that vetting clients’ source of wealth is becoming ever more detailed and demanding. In Singapore, for example, the city-state’s major money laundering scandal of 2023 has prompted authorities to clamp down on suspected illicit financial flows. Unfortunately, it has also affected onboarding times,

Bank of Singapore noted that traditionally, relationship managers were required to manually review extensive documentation on a client’s background, business activities, investment history and income sources to prepare a SoW report. These records included financial statements, tax filings, property valuations, corporate submissions and payslips.

The bank said that with its new “assistant,” once the relevant materials are uploaded, the tool automatically reviews them and produces a comprehensive, standardised draft report. This process reduces human error, particularly inconsistencies or omissions that can occur due to differing levels of experience among relationship managers.

Using its own resources and those of parent bank, OCBC, SOWA also validates client information against benchmarks such as salary ranges and corporate revenue figures, improving the accuracy and credibility of the output, it said. 

With all this new tech, relationship managers remain integral to the process, the bank said. They review and refine each AI-generated draft before submission to the bank’s internal compliance teams as part of its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) framework.

“In an increasingly complex risk landscape, artificial intelligence can play a pivotal role by automating repetitive tasks like report generation and data validation. Agentic AI pushes the envelope further by enhancing efficiency, accuracy and consistency in decision-making,” Kam Chin Wong, global head of financial crime compliance at Bank of Singapore, said. “With AI integrated into the source of wealth reporting process, relationship managers can shift their focus from manual documentation to meaningful client engagement and risk assessment. This not only strengthens client relationships but also maintains high standards of regulatory compliance while delivering greater value.”