I attended a KPMG "Reg-Tech" conference and I was shocked how little these "AML and FinCrime specialists" know about AI!
Does this coincide with your experience in the FinCrime / AML / KYC space?
On Thursday this week, KPMG hosted a RegTech conference. The event description sounded promising, so I applied for a seat and was approved a couple of days later. I had high expectations and was genuinely interested in learning about cutting-edge AI in the field, especially with respect to explainability, which aligns with my research focus.
Unfortunately, the technical side fell far short. The talks were mostly centered on regulation, and apart from a few exceptions, the content was unengaging. Either it wasn’t new to me, wasn’t relevant to the areas I’m interested in, or wasn’t technical at all.
There was one company, Hawk AI, that I paid particular attention to, as they are a notable player in explainable AI for AML in the DACH region. Surprisingly, the CEO was unable to answer a relatively straightforward question from someone in the audience. Instead, he resorted to vague, evasive responses that anyone with some domain knowledge could recognize as such.
After the main sessions, during the networking part (rooftop, good food), I spoke with several panel speakers. Interestingly, they all seemed to recognize the weaknesses in others’ talks, but not in their own. None of them demonstrated solid AI expertise, yet they presented their solutions as state of the art. In reality, they did not appear capable of distinguishing between strong and weak approaches.
I was interested in discussing topics like explainability methods, logic programming, knowledge graphs, deontic logic, real-time KYC/AML, and data integration. With one exception, a KPMG representative who advised me not to apply for a job there (lol), no one even seemed to understand why I brought these topics up.