Nasdaq examines the state of financial crime, its deep human impact, and how it threatens the integrity of global financial system.

This report brings together expert research and data, industry perspectives, and the voices of survivors, providing a unique view into the scope and impact of financial crime – and the scale of coordination needed to address it.

Adena Friedman

"Nasdaq has made the fight against financial crime central to our business... Now, we look forward to facilitating a more global conversation about how we can collectively defend our financial system against the financial criminals seeking to exploit it."

Adena Friedman, Chair & CEO, Nasdaq

The Global Scale of Financial Crime

In 2023, an estimated $3.1T in illicit funds flowed through the global financial system. Money laundering accounted for trillions of dollars funding a range of destructive crimes, including an estimated $346.7B in human trafficking and $782.9B in drug trafficking activity, as well as $11.5B in terrorist financing. 

In 2023, fraud scams and bank fraud schemes totaled $485.6B in projected losses globally. 

$3.1T in flow of illicit funds, $485.6B in fraud losses

Economic Impact of Financial Crime

Financial crimes such as fraud act as a meaningful depressant on productivity and economic growth.

The Impacts of Financial Crime on the U.S. Economy

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Top Threats

Our research shows anti-financial crime professionals prioritized the threat of fraud on real-time/faster payments systems and complex typologies, such as money mule activity, drug trafficking, terrorist financing, and human trafficking as top concerns.

Financial Crime Threats of Greatest Concern: Real-Time/Faster Payments Fraud: 52%; Money Mule Activity: 47%; Terrorist Financing: 33%; Drug Trafficking: 33%; Government Benefit Fraud: 32%; Elder Abuse/Exploitation: 27%; Consumer Scams: 24%; Internal Fraud: 22%; Human Trafficking: 19%; Business Email Compromise: 11%

Current Challenges

The pace of innovation driving new threats and the growing complexity of financial crime and global regulatory frameworks are creating an increasingly challenging environment for financial institutions.

"We need a technology solutionto the increase in volume.We can't continue to hire." -Industry Interview
Challenges of Greatest Concern: 5-10 Year Outlook: Ensuring compliance with regulatory changes and expectations: 33%; Keeping ahead of emerging financial crime risks and threats: 25%; Legacy technology and systems that cannot support our future requirements: 20%; Increasing financial and reputational impact of potential non-compliance: 19%; Lack of regulatory alignment on effectness and outcomes-focused program: 3%

Opportunities and Potential Solutions

Innovating with Technology

In the face of these challenges, most respondents trust in technology, such as new solutions, artificial intelligence, data and analytics to improve their financial crime prevention efforts.

Graph Title: Which Technologies does your Organization Have in Production for AFC processes? Data: Intelligent document processing (IDP): 62%; Natural language processing (NLP): 50%; Robotic process automation (RPA): 44%; Machine Learning: 40%; Generative AI / large language models (LLMs): 26%
70%

of respondents expect their organization to increase spending on AI or machine learning in the next 1-2 years.

Graph Title: What Opportunities Does your Organization plan to Pursue to Improve its Financial Crime Prevention Efforts? Data: By leveraging data and analytics to identify and prevent financial crime: 65%; By Investing in new solutions for financial crime prevention: 59%; By investing in artifical intelligence for financial crime detection: 58%; By collaborating with other financial institutions and industry groups: 24%

Improved Regulation

Respondents felt that improved regulation would benefit their organizations in prioritizing typology-specific priorities, encouraging information sharing, and supporting innovation.

Industry Collaboration

Respondents underscored the importance of public-private partnerships as well as private-private information sharing between banks to keep ahead of financial crime threats.

Nasdaq 2024 Global Financial Crime Report

Nasdaq 2024 Global Financial Crime Report

Insights at the Intersection of Financial Crime Data & Real Survivor Stories 

Verafin, Anti-Financial Crime Technology

Verafin, a Nasdaq company, has been a partner to the financial industry for decades and provides industry-leading cloud-based solutions to support financial institutions as they prevent fraud and uncover money laundering.

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