Alert and Investigation Management

Earl Jackson is an online scammer. He wants to launder $30,000 earned illegally from phishing attacks and is targeting U+ Bank to help him in the process.

Vanessa recently moved from her role as a bank teller at U+ Bank to join the Financial Crimes Prevention team as a Triage specialist. After her initial training and a week in the role, she is already helping fight financial crimes.

Carl has been with U+ Banks' financial crimes investigation department for a long period of time.

Let us drop in with Vanessa as she starts her day.

Vanessa checks her dashboard, and it looks like the team are doing well. Her colleagues said this time of year could be very busy but that doesn't appear so now. She clicks Get Next Work.

Vanessa sees that there is a single Alert to review, Multiple cash transactions under threshold. She opens the Visualizer and can see straight away that there are three cash transactions, just under $10,000, whole numbers, and all going to the same account. She recognizes that this is classic payment structuring and aligns with the Alert that was triggered.

From her training Vanessa remembers to spot check a few supporting details in the Alert, so she accesses the Preview. Vanessa looks at the Subject in the Alert and notes that Earl Jackson and Klaus du Val are not customers of U+ Bank. With this done she confirms her assessment of the Alert and escalates the Investigation.

The system serves Vanessa her work and she has everything she needs to get it done. However, there is a lot going on behind the scenes to make that happen. The Alert that Vanessa triages originates from U+ Bank's transaction monitoring system. Using straight through processing, Pega enriches the key data from the Alert, indexes it, and creates a new Investigation Case.

Pega's Intelligent routing makes sure that the Investigation lands in the correct queue and Get Next Work makes sure that Vanessa is working on the most important and skill appropriate task at the time. All of this is fully automated and takes place in mere milliseconds. The Visualizer allows Vanessa to get a good read on what is really happening and the full details of the Alert and how it was processed are a button click away via the Preview window.

Adding in the Visualizer and Alert preview, Pega creates a smooth and seamless experience to help Vanessa and U+ Bank, which is a win-win. But for Earl and his 30 000 dollars, the trouble has only just begun.

Clicking Get Next Work, Carl picks up the escalation and sees he has five Subjects to research. Opening the first one, Dawn Summers, he sees that he needs to carry out five research tasks. He opens the first one, General Assessment, and is presented with a questionnaire to complete. He reads the initial question, then brings up Dawn's profile where he can find what he needs to answer the questions. Carl completes the remainder of the questionnaire, referencing the profile as needed.

Carl then completes the rest of the questionnaires.

Meanwhile, the ongoing efforts of scammer Earl and his gang have resulted in three new Alerts being triggered. This expands the scope of Carl's investigation, so he has more important work to do. The new Alerts introduce three additional organizations that need to be researched. The previous responses provided for Dawn and William need to be reviewed, and the prior research for Klaus and Earl is good as it stands. Going to the Visualizer, he sees the new Alerts' contents were added. He tweaks the filters to focus on the flow of funds.

His assessment is that after the initial three payments to Dawn, joint account holder William split up $30 000 differently passing it on to intermediaries PowerRock and Berry Inc. In turn, PowerRock and Berry Inc further tweaked the amounts sending equivalent payments to First Dutch Investments Inc.

He previews the profile for First Dutch Investments and sees that the name Earl Jackson appears as a Primary contact and KYC significant related party. Recognizing the name from earlier, this indicates potential evidence to conclude the investigation.

Carl completes the outstanding work and is ready to finalize the Investigation.

Earl Jackson and his co-conspirators are unaware that with the help of AIM, U+ Bank have discovered this chain of suspicious activities, and are about to act. Assisted by AIM, Vanessa and Carl have uncovered the full extent of the criminal activities committed by Earl Jackson and his associates. While he remains unaware, the team of investigators at U+ Bank is ready to take further action. As Carl carries out the detailed work required in most investigations, Pega Live Data provides Carl with a one stop shop for each subject he is researching, sourcing data from across U+ Bank's systems of record.

Without the right tools, Investigations are incredibly expensive to conduct. AIM provides U+ Bank with a configurable library of tasks and questionnaires. Driver data ensures that investigators are only presented with a minimal set of tasks and questions to tackle. This is key in reducing operational costs and minimizing investigation resolution times. Only Pega can use data from prior investigations to link the new Alerts together into a single, cohesive investigation. U+ Bank does not have to conduct three separate investigations, and Carl can get the big picture straight away. After the Alerts are merged, the system automatically re-assesses what additional research is required and reuses what it can.

To wrap up his part of the investigation Carl confirms his assessment of the three Alerts and moves to the Finalize Investigation screen. Here, he confirms the investigation conclusion as reportable suspicious activity and sets the rationale to the financial crime topologies he saw. For post-investigation actions he chooses to file a Suspicious Activity Report and requests a customer review from another team.

He selects Report from the dropdown; the system creates a draft and populates it on his screen. He reviews the resulting draft and moves ahead. With the click of the Submit button, Carl's work here is done, and he has earned his next coffee.

When concluding his investigation, Pega GenAI is used to generate the draft report and save Carl significant time. He doesn't have to rekey data, risking errors and saves a little of his sanity at the same time.

The text of his report is packaged up with key data into the GoAML format suitable to submit to the local regulator as a Suspicious Activity Report (or SAR). The SAR Case will orchestrate the required Compliance review, final sign off and then filing to regulators.

But what about Earl and his friends? After some work by the Compliance department, he is unceremoniously offboarded as a customer, added to a watch list and may get some unwanted attention from Law Enforcement soon due to U+ Bank's report to the regulators! Another upside for U+ Bank is their reputation on the dark web as one to stay away from.

In summary we showed how Pega can:

• Streamline processing combining multiple Alerts into a single investigation
• Provide insights immediately, through easy access to relevant information
• Optimize investigator experience while remaining compliant
• Reduce investigation cycles
• Automate creation of downstream work