The UK Fintech Financial Crime Exchange

The UK Fintech Financial Crime Exchange (FFE), a partnership between Fintrail and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), brings together leading Fintech industry groups and experts who work together to help curb the criminal exploitation of fintech. Tech Against Terrorism was invited to attend the FFE’s August meeting to present our project, and to gather insight from leading practitioners on their experiences with terrorist and violent extremist exploitation of fintech.

Fintechs are already heavily regulated - especially in comparison with the other sectors of technology that our initative is working with. They provide a huge range of financial services; from automatic trading to virtual currency wallets, the variety of sectors that fintechs operate within means that there are a multitude of ways they can be abused. Speakers at the FFE shared different typologies -  patterns of behaviour that help identify criminal or terrorist activity. Others provided advice about the most efficient preventative measures, thereby educating their peers and competitors with best practice knowledge. With the institutions that help monitor suspicious activity reports (SARs) already heavily overburdened, the practical guidance shared in the session will be invaluable to many of the attendees to the meeting, and especially those new to the world of fintech.

The Tech Against Terrorism team was encouraged to see such open sharing of experiences, and this typifies the open dialogue that our project hopes to stimulate. Even though this event was fintech orientated, the onus of preventing the exploitation of technology by terrorists and violent extremists does not rest on any single industry – there must be a multifaceted approach.

Tech Against Terrorism is hosting a range of global workshops, bringing together a variety of technology companies and industry experts to empower one another. We firmly believe that learning through similar industry-led initiatives can help curb the terrorist and violent extremist exploitation of technology. For a full list of our upcoming events, and to register your interest in attending, please click here.