Refine Intelligence Launches with $13 Million Seed Funding to Transform Anti-Money Laundering by “Catching the Good Guys”

Refine helps financial institutions recognize customers’ life stories and identify legitimate activities, so they can quickly clear away false alarms

Refine Intelligence, the pioneer in Financial Crime Greenflagging, launched with a $13 million seed funding round led by Glilot Capital Partners and Fin Capital with participation from SYN Ventures, Valley Ventures (the corporate venture capital arm of Valley Bank), and other investors including Ground Up Ventures.

While the anti-money laundering (AML) industry is focused on detecting account anomalies, Refine Intelligence is the only crime-fighting fintech focused on “greenflagging” legitimate customer behavior through providing a clear picture of their life stories. This novel approach is set to change the game in AML, helping banks reduce handling time while focusing on truly unexplained anomalies. Founded by serial entrepreneurs in financial crime fighting and cybersecurity, Refine Intelligence will use the funding to accelerate expansion within North America, Europe and Latin America, and advance the development of its technology.

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Catching the Good Guys

AML investigators are overwhelmed by transaction monitoring alerts that spot anomalies in customer accounts. Most alerts are triggered by perfectly legitimate life stories such as selling a house, buying a used car, or paying tuition for an international student. Banks simply lack the context for these activities, and devote many resources to investigating false alarms. Refine Intelligence provides critical context in real time to explain customers’ actions using two capabilities:

1. User-friendly digital inquiries in which customers are asked about the source of funds, the nature of the activity and other crucial contextual information; and
2. AI trained using a unique, proprietary data set of genuine customer activity patterns that can automatically recognize specific customer life stories.

With Refine Intelligence, banks can bolster their existing AML monitoring to:

• Better focus on truly suspicious activity by quickly clearing away false alarms
• More clearly understand customer behavior and transactions, leading to more effective and efficient investigations
• Enable financial institutions to collect much needed context from the customer in a structured, consistent and bias-free manner

Putting Customer Relationships Back into Banks’ Hands

“Banks used to have a superpower: knowing their customers’ life stories so they could provide personalized financial service,” said Refine Intelligence Co-founder and CEO Uri Rivner. “With banking increasingly done online and a significant drop in face-to-face interactions, banks’ understanding of customer behavior is limited. Refine Intelligence restores that critical context, empowering banks to ‘catch the good guys’ – identify false alarms triggered by perfectly legitimate customer transactions, and focus their energy on actual dubious activity.”

Refine Intelligence’s first customer was Valley Bank, which saw such great outcomes that their venture capital arm, Valley Ventures, decided to invest in the company. “After implementing Refine Intelligence’s solution, our AML inquiry process was cut from 16 days to two minutes,” said Valley Bank’s Director of AML Chris Phillips. “This has freed up our team to spend less time on investigations and more time serving our customers. Using Refine Intelligence has enhanced our efficiency by streamlining the process of investigating and resolving AML alerts, and improving our customers’ satisfaction.”

Statistical Analysis from Refine Intelligence

Based on Refine Intelligence’s work with North American banks, it has determined the following points of interest:

• Refine Intelligence’s Digital Outreach reduces customer inquiry resolution time from two weeks to two minutes.
• Refine’s Digital Outreach customer inquiries achieve an 85% completion rate
• 64% of all AML alerts can be explained by the following top five life stories:
  1. Buying or selling real estate
  2. Payment for cash-intensive jobs
  3. Giving or receiving of gifts
  4. Buying or selling a vehicle
  5. Payment for construction expenses

“Money laundering is a persistent problem for banks to monitor, yet it lacks an effective automated solution to keep the issue in check,” said Glilot Capital Partner Founder and Managing Partner Kobi Samboursky. “Refine Intelligence has developed a powerful solution that ensures efficiency through the innovative application of their AI technology. We are excited about the market opportunities ahead of Refine Intelligence, and thrilled to join their mission to transform the financial fraud detection sector.”

“In a digitally-transformed banking landscape, Refine Intelligence stands out for its innovation in combating financial crime,” said Fin Capital Principal Sasha Pilch. “Their approach to AML offers a simple yet unique solution to a problem that banks have struggled with for years. We’re excited to join Refine Intelligence on its path to becoming a leader in crime-fighting fintech, transforming how banks combat money laundering and fraud.”

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