The RegTech Pulse
The RegTech Pulse examines the latest industry and technology trends that help organizations fight financial crime and streamline payments, so money and goods can move safely and securely around the world. Industry experts across the world join the conversation to discuss their insights and share best practices. The RegTech Pulse is brought to you by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which helps power compliant and assured client transactions to build an interconnected and trusted financial ecosystem.risk.lexisnexis.com/regtechpulse
The RegTech Pulse
Unlocking Innovation to Combat Financial Crime
In this episode, Nick Searle and Punit Mathur from LexisNexis Risk Solutions discuss the company's transformative journey in recent years and how they are putting innovation at the heart of operations and customer solutions. Discover how, through the concerted efforts of product teams and innovation leaders, the company navigates the complexities of creating a unified strategy that promises to deliver more value to customers.
DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to and shall not be used as legal advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. LexisNexis Risk Solutions does not warrant that the information provided in this podcast is accurate or error-free.
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening from wherever you're joining across the world. Thank you again for tuning into the REC Tech Pulse podcast from Lexis Nexus Resolutions. I'm your host, ankit Sharma. In the last podcast you heard me talk to two of my wonderful colleagues and we discussed the fraud nuances in Australia. Today I'm joined by two gentlemen again in the world of innovation, and this is one of the conversations that I've been really looking forward to have for a long time. So, without further ado, if I could just quickly request Nick Searle, the head of innovation, Punit Mathur, the senior manager for innovation, to quickly introduce themselves Over to you guys.
Nick Searle:Hi Ankit, thank you very much for having us on. I've been with the organization for a couple of years now. I've joined the product org as the as the head of innovation for the financial crime, compliance and payments side of the business. So when I joined, Punit was already running strong with all of the work that we've been doing. But yeah, we've come in and really tried to make a big shift in how we work with the rest of the business over the last couple of years.
Punit Mathur:Thanks Nick. I'm Punit Mathur. Nick is based in London and I'm in Singapore. I'm kind of leading the face of the innovation in the APEC market and kind of leading innovation projects we are doing here as well as kind of heart of talking to customer, getting inside from customer and collecting insight in this region so that we can we can build solution for global audience. Yeah, my background is starting from a journey of a designer and now into core, into product, focusing on how we can help the organization to move faster, work on the areas which are not explored and kind of helping the business to grow faster. And thanks, ankit, looking forward to this discussion.
Ankit Sharma:Thanks guys.
Ankit Sharma:Likewise, as I said, I mean I've been really wanting to pick your brains, because being a responsible REC tech as well as a fraud partner for any of our clients is important to have a solid innovation function within, embedded within, the corporation.
Ankit Sharma:So you know, thank you for your time today. All right, let's jump straight into it. I have a lot of questions that I want your critical inputs and critical thinking around. So, before we kind of get started in any of the questions or topics you know, I think if we could, just for the benefit of our listeners, talk a bit more about how the journey of the innovation port has been. I know it's a global function with several pods across the globe and we have Punit here in Singapore. We bless with that. But then, nick, if you could just from from as the, as the head of the organization, just kind of lay the vision or just, you know, essentially lay how, how, how you guys are collaborating in the innovation group, you know what's the transformation process looking like, and just lay the land, just you know, over to you.
Nick Searle:Well, thanks for the questions, Eckit. I guess the idea of innovation within LNRS is not new. However, I think one of the visions that we've had once I came in was to really have a look at see what all of the different innovation teams are working on, what the sort of general travel direction the different groups are going in and really step towards organizing all of the different efforts into a single location. So, from the perspective of all of the teams in the organization, there's maybe been either an ignorance of where to go to talk to people about innovation or maybe a confusion as to who to go to. So really, the vision is about bringing everybody together and collaborating from a single place. So that's what we're working towards and I think we've made really good strides towards that over the last couple of years.
Punit Mathur:Yeah, just just to add a little bit on that front, right. So within innovation group, I think there's a big journey which Nick is driving on transformation within the org and leading a lab within this group which we have kind of rebranded and renamed as Carbon Lab. I think a lot of companies have their own lab, so we also have Carbon Lab now where we kind of emphasizing on how we should approach on a problem or a customer requirement, right. So we are building processes within that and kind of working on ideas and making sure that we have some output out of it and kind of have plug that kind of requirement or the experiment output within our product line.
Punit Mathur:So I think what we have changed over a period of time since Nick joined is basically the working with the product team and give it a light of the idea, because there are a lot of innovation idea which there are, poc happen and then you don't see what happened after that, right. So we try to make sure that whatever we are working on, wherever we put our energy on, have some kind of output which make our customer life easy, right. And we are parking the ideas which are really not have that much impact right now, so focusing on idea which are making an impact and bring value to the customer. That's where we are focusing in the lab and kind of building within the lab. We are building an environment as well, kind of a cloud environment to run multiple experiments, because we have data to play with. We have a lot of customers who are interested to work with us, so that's where we are heading towards.
Ankit Sharma:Really, and that sounds really fascinating and thanks for sharing on that. Punit Nick, if I could just kind of develop a bit more on that. For example, our systems are embedded into mission-critical applications for all our customers. You talked about the environment and the functioning of the lab and you laid down the vision and the thought process behind setting that up, but it'll help all of us if you could just kind of elaborate a bit more around the environment. How will it better help or impact our business and, more importantly, how is it going to change the life of our customers?
Nick Searle:Yeah, great question. I think one of the biggest things that we have going for us here at Lexus Nexus Risk Solutions is the fact that we have grown through very targeted acquisitions of a lot of companies in the past. So we've built our customer base by bringing them in via different acquisitions and products that they've already been using. I think one of the big things that we're working towards is ensuring that we give ourselves all of the appropriate tools to really look at experimenting how all of these different products and data sets can be used together. So what we've not had in the past is the tooling the our own environments in which we can start ingesting all of the data that we've got from all of our products, but from our customers as well.
Nick Searle:Although we've got state-of-the-art and industry leading security protocols, what we've not done is utilize them for our own benefits. So that's really where we're aiming this vision towards is ensuring the same level of safety and security that we provide our customers to ourselves. To work on all of the different data sets as I said, the products that we've got out in the market now, because we've got so many of them, we've not really explored the benefit of adding them together or playing with how different elements of different products might enhance some of the products that our customers are using today. So really what we're talking about is building our own tools and then, once we're very happy with what that looks like, building separate instances to be able to experiment with our customers as well not in a production environment, so obviously we don't want to affect any mission critical systems that are up and running now. We're creating different avenues for our customers to work with us to explore what developments of our products would look like going forwards.
Ankit Sharma:Work sounds really exciting in your side of the world, nick. It sounds like the movie Matrix, one of my favorite movies, the work that Neo and Morphus used to do and before we sort of the red pill. And if I could direct this question to you, Punit and Nick, feel free to jump in as well there must be a plethora of these interesting ideas in your canvas. What are the cutting edge technologies that your transformation team is working on these days? If you could just elaborate a bit more, that are the exciting ones and on the basis of that, some of our customers may benefit as to what are the trends that they can set from a compliance perspective.
Punit Mathur:Yeah, thanks, ankit. I think even an example of Matrix. I've taken that red pill long back and going through this journey, still going through and there are technologies which come, evolve, die and kind of re-evolve right and then mature, some mature, some really die, right I think. In terms of currently what's going on. There's a lot of hype about JNAI Generative AI and we are also going through that journey to figure out what that means for us, for our business, for our customers, how we can, what kind of experiment we can do which, as I said earlier, which will have an impact to the customer right. So we have kind of divided our work into, as normally use terminology, h1, h2, h3. So there are a couple of ideas which are really far fresh which we are exploring at the moment. But for us, being a data company and have a lot of data available with us to play with, as Nick mentioned earlier, we are working on a couple of experiments to make insight of that data and using JNAI for that, getting out of what kind of insight might be really helpful for customer to make sure that they are not exposed to the risk from the money launders or terrace financing. So those are the key area in financial crime we work on. So working on those areas and using JNAI to make it more meaningful insight for the customer, rather than just throwing alerts or doing some risk analysis, but making that more meaningful. So those experiments we are doing currently internally.
Punit Mathur:I think one interesting project we are exploring at the moment is around languages as well. I'm not saying that's not being explored worldwide, but I think what we are looking basically from a lens of what it means for our customer being present in AIPAC. I think that's where the all languages Chinese, japanese, Vietnamese, thai all are there. Even if I talk about Indian context, there are so many regional languages. So I'm not saying we are tackling all, but what I'm saying here is there is a challenge to be solved.
Punit Mathur:There have been companies who have tried it out, but I think we are looking more from a context of what kind of challenges our customers are facing. So we work on an angle, always that what it means for our customer, what are the challenges they are facing and how we can help using this cutting edge technologies from generative AI as well as the machine learning models, how those can merge together to help solve those challenges. So I think we are focusing on that as well, in terms of screening capabilities and having running experiment on those. So yeah, there are a lot of interesting stuff going on within the lab. We are here to talk to customers as well. Feel free to reach out to us and happy to collaborate on that front.
Ankit Sharma:Brilliant. You raised a very interesting point on languages, because every 100 kilometers in Asia, for example, the language changes, the culture changes, the compliance maturity, the fraud index, all these other things change. So I can completely appreciate where you're coming from and I'm sure that's the need of the R from a customer standpoint as well. But myself, being a student of compliance and being involved into understanding more of macroeconomic parameters, if you could just maybe talk a bit more on where you're seeing trade compliance or trade-based money laundering involved within the region, because in the post-pandemic world we've seen that trade is so important for any economy overall. So what are your views on that?
Punit Mathur:Thank you for this question. This is something close to my heart because when I started work in the financial domain and that was one of my first project, right, and we have gone through this journey Going back to the history, when MS came up with the regulation around Western tracking it all started there, right, and since then I am being working on this area, kind of looking out on the new regulation, how the customer landscape is changing, regulatory landscape is changing, what are the requirements coming up, and even the industry has evolved a lot, right, we have a lot of experiment done on blockchain, on DLT, to bring trade, trade transactions there. Apart from that, there are new regulations which are keep coming on, like the one which is came by OFAC around May 2020, which kind of not just involved financial institution but kind of expanding the remit on the other side of the, the kind of actors which are involved in the trade transaction, right, like Marine Time Insurance Company, the flag registry, shipping industry, ship owners, operators so it's kind of expanding right the trade liability or the risk around trade and and the partners involved within the trade transaction and the responsibility of them. So I think for trade, it's not just Responsibility of one, one unit, like maybe, for example, financial institution, but also the responsibility of the partner involved, right, uh, so so I think we are focusing on those as well. And what are the challenges they face? Right?
Punit Mathur:So, not just talking about vessel tracking and do is good screening, but more looking holistically of overall journey of the trade, the, the hidden risks which are there, which which are our customers are exposed to, unknowingly. Right, like the, the UBO relationship of a sanction of a of a maybe shipping company or even the vessel company or ship owners linkages with any kind of money laundering activity, adverse media or or even directly into the sanction. Right, and, given this, wars going on in the world nowadays there are this, this is so dynamic and evolving, right, there are everyday new, new companies getting sanctioned or new, new vessel getting sanctioned, vessel going to North Korea getting sanctioned, and there are a lot of kind of illicit activities happening, given that the ship shipping operators playing around with AIS transponders, spoofing and all those things, right. So, yeah, I think we are heavily invested in this and kind of working with, with the data we have and Kind of our sanctioned expertise we have around around the companies, around the owners, around the vessels and whatnot.
Punit Mathur:So, yeah, there is a lot going on and recently we have Looking further down the line, not just vessels but talks about containers and whatnot, right. So a lot of stuff happening and kind of working with the ecosystem, all the, all the parties which are getting involved, working with them, understanding their challenges and and walking them through the journey of how not just related to sanction but also towards the money laundering which is happening and what kind of typologies which are coming. So, yeah, there's a lot going on on the trade side of things.
Ankit Sharma:That's good to hear. I mean, obviously we are in the business of making the world better and safer place for everyone and really appreciate you sharing those insights, nick, in the last 10, 15 minutes. I mean, one thing I've really gathered by speaking to the both of you is that we really are placing our customers at the heart of you know what you guys are trying to do, really working with them, but I know that you know even some of the newer conversations around. You know some of the new gen technologies or prospects or the new verticals that the company is trying to open. You guys are also kind of open towards working With those organizations and institutions at large. But if you could just kind of simplify this, this framework, this lab framework or your teams framework for us, I think it will be really useful for all listeners.
Nick Searle:Yeah, thanks, no problem, I am.
Nick Searle:I'll try to keep it simple.
Nick Searle:So we've got a couple of live examples at the moment and, although we're looking at the latest and greatest technologies, the biggest impacts that we're seeing are really looking at the combination of our products that we've got today. So the best example that we've got is we've got, obviously, our list screening engines and our products associated with those, but we've also brought in products from acquisitions that are looking at refining results coming out of the back of screening engines. So what we've not done in the past is work directly with our customers that have been using one of our products pre acquisition and then, after acquisition, realize that they're actually using multiple products from our organization. Our products really haven't been necessarily fully blended together and working together. So we've got two live examples with customers both in the US and in Europe where we're looking at how we're seamlessly improving the end result for our customers by combining our products in an experimentation environment and ensuring that the results are up to par with what our customers are expecting and far exceeding the results that they've been getting from us in the past.
Ankit Sharma:That's good to hear and, as they say, all good things must come to an end, so has our time for this conversation. I think we need to do a series with you guys, because you guys are across so many things in so many domains, I think, in order for all of us to extract more value. I think we'll definitely have to do another podcast in a few weeks, or probably will come back in a month or two. But again, before I let you guys go, you know if, if, if you were to take out your crystal balls, which I'm sure you have somewhere hidden in your homes or offices Can you please share some, some trends that you guys are really actively tracking, or is there anything that's keeping you up at night, nick, if you could just start with that.
Nick Searle:I have a question. I'm I'm maybe in the minority I'm hopefully not, but I look at all of the change as exciting and the fact that new opportunities always present themselves. So we've been through hype machines before. You can see I'm.
Nick Searle:I'm gray and lacking enough hair to showcase that we we've been through these before, so the hype machine doesn't really necessarily bother me because I know that we as a, as a people, generally are responsible for the way that we do the weed out the bad actors well ahead of time.
Nick Searle:So I think that we come with ebbs and flows and understanding our technology on a wide scale.
Nick Searle:So the gen generative AI, the AI boom at the moment, does present itself with lots of opportunities, but at the same time, we do have to be responsible with it.
Nick Searle:Although I won't say it keeps me up at night, I know that our group specifically, we take it very seriously, so we're not rushing into things that you know it responsibly. We've got experience significantly with blockchain, crypto in the organization and so I think some of the underlying technologies there, with distributed ledgers and the advent or the advance of technology to allow for distributed ledgers to really be be useful. So I think we're. We're sort of at the point that we're we're able to start playing with some of these things, not necessarily deploying them at the cutting edge right at the start, but really making use of them once we see some of the benefits that they come across the across the population. So I'm I'm really excited with with with what some of these technologies can present to us, and I'm not necessarily losing sleep over over the overhype at the moment, so long as we maintain that responsible approach to using it.
Ankit Sharma:Absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much. I mean, as I said, I was really looking forward to this conversation. You know, and as visionaries, you've really helped me dip my toes into what lies ahead, not just from an organization perspective, but also from where the market is heading, to what our customers are, you know, asking us to co create, working with them. Thank you again, guys, thank you for me. Thank you, nick, for your time. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights. Thanks so much.
Punit Mathur:Thank you for having us. Thank you Thanks again.
Ankit Sharma:Alright, thank you all for tuning in. You know you heard Nick and Punit share their innovation journey. You also heard them talk about what are the trends that they're tracking and what are some of the technologies that they're working with. Thank you for tuning into Lexus Nexus Resolutions. Rec Tech Pulse podcast. Do connect with us, do follow, follow with us on social media platforms and it's goodbye from now and thank you again.
