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Fintech Top Voice: Interview with David Caruso, VP, Financial Crimes Compliance at WorkFusion

Fintech Top Voice: Interview with David Caruso, VP, Financial Crimes Compliance at WorkFusion

Hello, FinTech community. Welcome to our FinTech Top Voice Interview Series.
The latest FinTech Interview with David Caruso, VP, Financial Crimes Compliance at WorkFusion is an interactive Q&A-styled conversation.

David Caruso is the Vice President of Financial Crime Compliance at WorkFusion. His in-depth expertise with anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance programs complements WorkFusion’s mission to help financial institutions combat financial crime and transform compliance programs with its AI Agents. 

Since 1996, David has been instrumental in creating and shaping the Financial Crime Risk and Compliance industry. Building AML and Sanctions Compliance programs at financial institutions across the US and internationally, overseeing notorious corruption and money laundering investigations, and building and selling a RegTech software firm put David at the forefront of every major issue and trend occurring in the financial crime risk space for the past 25 years. David has worked at and with institutions such as JP Morgan, Riggs Bank, Key Bank, Union Bank of California, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and HSBC. He has also founded consulting firms, including the Dominion Advisory Group and Alert Decision. He was the Chief Client Officer of TransparINT, a machine learning RegTech firm that changed how investigators find and use critical risk information. 

About WorkFusion – 

WorkFusion is a pioneer in AI agents for financial crime compliance (FCC). Its AI Agents are purpose-built workers that augment compliance teams in level 1 and level 2 analyst functions for anti-money laundering (AML), adverse media monitoring, sanctions screening alert review, customer onboarding, Know Your Customer (KYC), transaction monitoring (TM) and customer service. WorkFusion’s AI solutions are technology controls that mitigate risk, solve talent challenges, increase workforce capacity, save money, enhance employee and customer experience, and improve compliance posture.

Let’s start…

FinTech Insights (FTI): Hi David, welcome to the FinTech Top Voice Interview Series. Please share your tech journey with us.

David: My time in Fintech centers on prior roles as an advisor/consultant and an early Chief Customer Officer of a Regtech firm founded in 2014. As a consultant to traditional financial institutions and Fintechs, I helped each better understand, design, build, and operate Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Sanctions compliance programs. For banks, I helped them develop protocols to provide services to Fintechs, and for Fintech, I helped them build programs to satisfy AML requirements placed upon them by their banking partners. As we all know, this issue is not solved and remains a top focus of the industry, policymakers, and regulators.

FTI: What are some of the biggest challenges financial institutions face in fighting economic crimes today? Can you share a real-world example where technology has significantly helped reduce financial crime risks?

David: Among the most significant economic crime challenges facing financial institutions today is the vast volume of work. Teams of capable analysts and investigators find themselves buried under what we call “alerts” and “cases.” There are a few reasons for this. One, unfortunately, is that criminals are as active as ever. They see endless opportunities to defraud consumers and businesses. In addition, transnational criminal syndicates are expanding narcotics and human trafficking operations everywhere. Second, systems used by financial institutions to detect the money that flows from the profits of these crimes are outdated. This creates volumes of work that are unsustainable. The good news is that new technology, including Machine Learning and AI, is changing this. By automating many of the routine and repetitive tasks required on every economic crime investigation, individual investigators can now spend more time gathering facts, reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement, and protecting law-abiding customers.

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FTI: How do technologies like AI and automation help banks stay ahead of money laundering schemes?

David: AI and automation provide critical help in several ways. First, it automates the data and record gathering required for every financial crime investigation, including money laundering. Because of regulations, every financial institution must document its step-by-step investigation work. There are thousands of investigators worldwide right now, still copying and pasting records from core systems, the internet, and data providers. Automation solves this problem. This relieves the investigator from the rote and repetitive work and gives them more time to focus on “thinking work.” For example, asking critical questions like who is involved in the suspicious activity and how to present it in a report to authorities. AI helps by adding layers of reasoning to the data gathering. Many of the basic but critical questions investigators must answer can now be answered by AI. For example, when an investigator sees unknown third parties involved in an activity, say as an originator or beneficiary of a funds transfer, AI can search for these third parties in the news or numerous databases and provide the results of that search to the investigator, saving them time and reducing human errors that occur from manual research.

FTI: What role does data play in identifying and preventing financial crimes?

David: Data plays a significant role in identifying and preventing financial crime. For example, when multiple parties are involved in a scheme, the investigator must research them and find data to understand who the parties are and whether their role in the activity is suspicious. Types of data can include media reports, business licenses, professional licenses, property records, and corporate ownership files.

FTI: How does automation make the work of compliance teams easier and more accurate?

David: Automation improves the compliance team’s work by ensuring consistency of execution. Financial crime investigations involve dozens of steps, many of which must be completed in each investigation. Automating these steps has significant benefits. First, it saves time. Just as important, it ensures management and banking regulators that the work is done consistently every time. Failure to adhere to procedures is a leading cause of regulatory criticism or regulatory penalties for compliance.

FTI: How can smaller financial institutions adopt advanced tools to fight financial crimes without big budgets?

David: The great news is that many AI tools are not cost-prohibitive. Many cost no more than the typical compensation paid to one employee. All financial institutions add new staff frequently. Instead of adding a new investigator, a bank can consider investing in AI software for a similar cost.

FTI: What is the future of financial crime prevention in the next five to ten years?

David: Financial crime prevention will change significantly in the next five to ten years. Many problems – data gathering, data synthesis, and analysis- are now done by machines entirely or by augmented human decision-making. It has always been the case that criminals move faster than financial institutions can keep up, but I see that gap closing and maybe even disappearing in the next decade. For example, AI will be able to scan enormous datasets of transactions, pinpoint activity out of the ordinary, and present it to an investigator for review. Previously, software relied on pre-set rules to find activity to surface. Unfortunately, criminals know about these systems and how they detect suspicious activity. They were easy to skirt. Now, we will detect more crime with AI learning quickly and looking for activity older rules-based systems missed.

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FTI: How does WorkFusion support organizations in keeping up with changing regulations?

David: As regulations change and new requirements are added, WorkFusion’s AI Agents can immediately adapt. We can include new requirements within hours through fast orchestration using our no-code platform.

FTI: What trends have you noticed in how financial criminals operate in recent years?

David: Criminals are always looking for ways to stay ahead of financial institutions, and they have the means and technical capabilities to do so. Whatever new technology, whether it’s digital assets or faster payments, criminals will find ways to compromise these products and systems. However, the basics of criminal activity remain unchanged – find gaps in legal systems and exploit them. This will not change.

FTI: Your predictions for 2025 for the fintech domain!

David: We will see much more adoption of AI tools in 2025. Financial institutions are now comfortable with AI and feel confident they can explain to their regulators how these new applications operate. This confidence in ” explainability,” as many call it, is crucial. Breaking down this barrier is a significant step needed for AI adoption to grow, and in 2025, that barrier is gone.

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FTI: Tell us about some of the top FinTech/other B2B events you’ll participate in (as a speaker or guest!) in 2025.

David: As a provider of AI Agents to the financial crime compliance space, I will be attending numerous events this year, including national conferences and chapter events sponsored by ACAMS, as well as those American Banker Association and fintech financial crime fighters, including AML & FinCrime Tech Forum USA 2025.

FTI: Please tag a fintech leader or researcher you would like to be featured in the Fintech Top Voice interview series.

David: Vic Maculaitus, i3strategies.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights on Fintech with us, David! We look forward to having you again at Fintech Top Voice series. 

To participate in our interviews, please write to us at news@intentamplify.com
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