The Data Signals Economy: Signal Coverage, Provenance, and the Risk-Based Architecture of Financial Crime Prevention

This IDC Perspective discusses how financial institutions are not relying on a single vendor to manage financial crime compliance. IDC survey data shows that the majority of banking institutions use three or more vendors in their financial crime compliance program, spanning KYC, transaction monitoring, and fraud. Only 14% of institutions operate with a single vendor, while 66% use three or more vendors. This reflects the operational reality that no single platform addresses the full spectrum of financial crime risk and that multivendor architectures are the norm, not the exception, in mature financial crime programs."Financial crime is evolving faster than the control frameworks built to detect it. The IDC Data Signals Economy Framework gives institutions a structured way to think about this problem. It is not enough to ask whether you have the right tools. You have to ask whether the signals feeding these tools are of the right quality, from the right sources, and calibrated against the right threat population for your specific risk environment. This is a different question, and it leads to better decisions," said Sam Abadir, research director, Risk, Compliance, and Financial Crime, IDC.