Transaction monitoring (TM): This module is capable of ingesting data for financial events in the form of deposits and transfers (both internal and external). It must have links to the payments hub (or payment systems) at the bank and also its core banking system.
Orchestration: This applies to both data and processes. There must be a means of importing the right data, from the right systems and sources, at the right time, and then processing them in the right order. This is the “glue” that integrates the preceding four modules. Most vendors will have built their own orchestration capability, or else they will have adapted a standard business process management (BPM) tool for this specific purpose.
Decision engine (DE): This module is used to calculate risk scores and it must include a BRE and it is usually augmented by an ML model. The DE will process banking data accessed via the TM module. It will also need a set of API connectors for ingesting additional data from security systems such as device ID, location intel and behavioral biometrics. Some of these APIs will be standard off-the-shelf connectors for common systems and others will be custom-made for a specific deployment. The combination of BRE and ML is used to highlight suspected money laundering activity by calculating and then integrating the risk scores for: (a) The transaction; and (b) The customer or account
Reporting: There is always a capability for generating a report (such as a suspicious activity report [SAR] for the regulator) that states the judgment with an audit trail for how that decision was determined. Modern systems will include some kind of automation or AI to prepopulate the report as much as possible.
Case investigation (CI): Transactions highlighted by the DE as high risk need to be assessed by human case investigators. Bank staff will use the CI module to make an informed judgment about whether a particular transaction is a TP or a FP. The CI module will give access to additional data sources such as KYC, adverse media and watchlists to help make the judgment. To increase productivity and accuracy, modern case investigation modules typically include such capabilities as step-by-step automated workflow, AI assistants, agentic AI, smart allocation, triage for urgency/importance and suggestions for data source prioritization. Advanced CI will handle the simplest, most common and most certain cases entirely by machine (straight-through processing [STP]) with minimal or zero inclusion of a human analyst.