ThetaRay Report Warns Europe’s AML System at ‘Breaking Point’ as New Regulations Make AI Adoption Inevitable

ThetaRay, a global leader in Cognitive AI financial crime compliance, today released a landmark study on the future of anti-money laundering in Europe. The study warns that Europe’s anti-money laundering (AML) system is approaching structural failure, and that financial institutions will be unable to meet upcoming supervisory expectations without advanced AI-driven monitoring and customer screening systems.

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The report, “Next-Generation AML Solutions: An Analysis of AI-Based Tools vis-à-vis the Reform of the European AML Institutional and Substantive Architecture,” offers some of the most comprehensive examinations to date of how the EU’s sweeping AML reform package and the Artificial Intelligence Act will reshape compliance across the region.

Co-authored by Prof. Andrea Minto, a leading authority on EU financial regulation at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University of Stavanger, and Yaron Hazan, ThetaRay’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, Advisory board member at the AI APAC Institute and former Head of Compliance at HSBC Israel, the study blends academic rigor with supervisory and operational expertise rarely found in a single publication.

The report finds that despite rising budgets and stronger enforcement, Europe’s AML framework continues to underperform:

• The FATF reports that 97% of 120 assessed countries show only low to moderate effectiveness in preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.
• FIUs across Europe report extremely low intelligence yield: the Netherlands identified <3.5% of 3.48 million 2024 reports as suspicious, while France’s Tracfin reports only ~5% actionable SARs.
• Germany’s FIU data shows that only 15% of SARs are investigated by law enforcement, with 95% of forwarded cases ending without prosecution.
• One operational risk study found that rules-based detection scenarios produced reporting in just 2% of cases.

According to the study, the global AML system suffers from persistent structural inefficiencies, high false-positive rates, and poor conversion from alerts to meaningful intelligence, the result of legacy rule-based systems that generate low-quality alerts, rely on siloed architectures, and lack the cross-border visibility required to detect modern networked financial crime.

“The data is clear: Europe’s AML system is no longer keeping pace with financial complexity,” said Yaron Hazan, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at ThetaRay. “For years, institutions have been trapped in a cycle of rule tuning, manual investigations, and defensive reporting, without materially improving outcomes. Under the new regulatory regime, failing to adopt AI will become a compliance vulnerability.”

The report highlights how the EU’s two major regulatory initiatives, the AML Package and the AI Act, together represent the most consequential shift in AML expectations in decades. The AML Package strengthens due diligence obligations, expands governance requirements, and establishes a new EU-level Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), harmonizing obligations across Member States. At the same time, the AI Act classifies transaction monitoring and sanctions screening as “high-risk” uses of AI, imposing strict requirements on transparency, human oversight, data governance, and model lifecycle management.

The authors also highlight heightened vulnerabilities in correspondent banking and crypto-asset flows, where traditional rule engines struggle to detect hidden network behaviour across complex cross-border transaction chains. The study further identifies growing friction between the AML Regulation (AMLR) and GDPR data processing constraints, warning that without clearer guidance, institutions could face overlapping regulatory and legal risks.

“Europe’s new AML framework fundamentally raises the standard for what effective compliance means,” said Andrea Minto, Professor of Law and Regulation of Financial Markets at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University of Stavanger. “The AML Package and the AI Act make clear that the integration of AI into customer due diligence and AML monitoring is inevitable. Financial institutions must now prepare for a world in which technological capability and legal obligation are inseparable.”

The report ultimately calls for a fundamental shift from volume-driven alerting to intelligence-led detection, emphasizing hybrid human-AI oversight, robust data governance aligned with the AI Act, transparent and explainable models, integrated customer and transaction screening workflows.

Read the report here.

About ThetaRay

ThetaRay harnesses the power of Cognitive AI for financial crime compliance, enabling financial institutions to precisely identify legitimate customers while flagging bad actors. The SaaS solutions overcome the limitations of traditional rule-based systems by shortening long implementation lifecycles, enabling efficient, risk-aware compliance operations. By transforming compliance from a regulatory obligation into a driver of growth, ThetaRay allows institutions to scale faster and expand confidently into new markets. By uncovering hidden criminal networks and delivering actionable insights, ThetaRay empowers organizations to combat evolving threats, maintain positive regulator relationships, and enhance customer experiences. Implemented at some of the world’s leading financial institutions including Santander, Clear Bank, Mashreq Bank, Payoneer, Onafriq and Travelex, ThetaRay helps financial institutions thrive, fostering trust and confidence across the global financial ecosystem. For more information, visit www.thetaray.com.

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