Alloya Selects New Software to Help Automate Financial Crime Monitoring

Alloya Corporate Federal Credit Union based near Chicago announced Tuesday that it has adopted anti-money laundering software from CaseWare RCM.

The partnership with CaseWare RCM, a provider of financial crime detection and prevention solutions, will allow Alloya to enhance its compliance with anti-money laundering regulations under the Bank Secrecy Act.

Alloya will use CaseWare’s Alessa software to handle due diligence, transaction monitoring, real-time wire screening, fraud detection and regulatory reporting.

Fraud is not an abstract risk for financial institutions. For example, from 2013 to 2016, a Massachusetts fraud ring siphoned $2 million from 27 financial institutions, including Alloya and six other credit unions.

Alloya is based in Naperville, Ill., and has $6.1 billion in assets and 1,367 credit unions as members. Alloya provides them transaction, liquidity and investment services.

Margie Giles, Alloya’s SVP of operations, said its decision to select Alessa for anti-money laundering was based on extensive research.

“A lot of credit unions depend on us and we needed a reliable, flexible and comprehensive solution,” she said. “We found that it was the only AML solution that would enable us to meet our digital advancement, efficiency and automation needs in order to innovate and best serve our member community.”

CaseWare RCM is part of CaseWare International Inc. of Toronto, Canada. The company said its Alessa software modular solution easily integrates with existing infrastructure, and scales with organizations as their size and needs grow. The company said the software allows Alloya and other users to further automate financial crime monitoring and reporting processes while also strengthening their fraud detection capabilities through advanced analytics, like anomaly detection and machine learning.

“Recent surveys have found that the onset of COVID-19 has forced a shift in the services offered and the transactions processed by credit unions,” CaseWare RCM COO Andrew Simpson said. “Alloya’s decision to use Alessa will give their organization one more tool to help them confidently adapt to these changes, while still complying with their BSA obligations.”

ResearchAndMarkets.com reported Oct. 22 that it projects global spending on anti-money laundering software to grow at a compound annual rate of 14.1% from 2020 to 2025. The largest consumer is North America, which accounted for 36.4% of spending in 2019.

The research company based in Dublin, Ireland said the fast growth in the anti-money laundering software stems from the increased need for automated transaction monitoring systems, the increased number of wired transactions and hefty fines for non-compliance with regulatory norms.

“Over the past five years, the financial service industry has witnessed far-reaching technology-led transformations, with companies looking for improving the efficiency of their financial departments by incorporating innovative IT solutions,” according to the report.