Hawk, a provider of AI-powered AML, transaction screening, and fraud prevention solutions, has launched Analytics Studio, a new AI lifecycle management solution.
It is designed to give banks and payment companies greater control over the development, governance, and ongoing optimisation of AI models used in financial crime compliance.
The adoption of artificial intelligence across the financial services sector continues to accelerate. Industry research indicates that 91% of banks actively encourage the use of AI across risk, compliance, and operations. At the same time, regulatory scrutiny of AI-driven decision-making has increased, with supervisors requiring greater transparency, explainability, and auditability of models used in AML and fraud prevention. Financial institutions are therefore under pressure to balance innovation with governance, ensuring models can be rapidly updated to reflect emerging financial crime typologies while remaining compliant with regulatory expectations.
The scale of the challenge is significant. According to global estimates, losses from money laundering alone can range between USD 800 billion and USD 2 trillion per year. False positives can account for as much as 95% of alerts in traditional transaction monitoring systems, creating operational strain and high investigation costs. As a result, improving model performance while reducing manual effort has become a strategic priority for compliance teams.
Supporting the full AI model lifecycle in financial crime
Analytics Studio is designed to simplify the creation, retraining, and governance of AI models used in AML and fraud detection. The solution enables institutions to manage models internally using expert-designed financial crime templates, guided model creation tools, pre-built performance dashboards, and automated documentation aligned with regulatory requirements. This approach supports faster model development while maintaining transparency and traceability throughout the AI lifecycle.
For organisations that prefer external expertise, Hawk also provides access to specialist data science services to support initial model development, as well as ongoing optimisation and retraining. This flexibility allows banks and payment firms to choose the level of internal control and resourcing that best fits their operating model.
By embedding financial crime domain intelligence directly into AI models, institutions can improve detection rates while reducing unnecessary alerts. Built-in governance features, including explainability, version control, and documentation, help ensure models are easier to approve, validate, and audit.
