RedCompass Labs and Featurespace partner to tackle human trafficking

RedCompass Labs, a world leader in good and bad payments technology and developer of RedFlag Accelerator, and Featurespace, the industry leader in preventing fraud and financial crime, have formed a technology partnership to accelerate the detection of human trafficking in financial data.  

Disrupting human trafficking

The partnership will bring significant disruption to sex and labor trafficking crimes – a much larger and more covert crime than many realize. Finance Against Slavery & Trafficking (FAST) Initiative estimates that forced labor alone generates an estimated USD 150 billion dollars in illicit funds per year from the 50 million people trapped in modern slavery. This will be achieved through the advanced automation of human trafficking detection in the financial data of Featurespace’s global customer base with the integration of RedCompass Labs’ RedFlag Accelerator technology. With research models provided by RedFlag Accelerator’s integration, financial institutions will be able to take advantage of a library of typologies that will close the gap between good intentions and proactive action on human trafficking.  

Tom Hewson, RedCompass Labs’ Founder and CEO: “Both Featurespace and RedCompass Labs have a shared commitment to identifying and disrupting financial crimes and the impact of them – and specifically regarding human trafficking. With the knowledge provided by the RedFlag Accelerator, combined with the game-changing analytics detection capabilities of ARIC Risk Hub, this technology partnership will be a step-change in bringing about that much-needed disruption, both domestically in the UK and around the world.” 

Three reasons why now

1. Society demands action: both governments and global intergovernmental organizations have set combatting human trafficking as a critical priority measured by Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings:

• The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Target 8.7 aims to bring the number of people in modern slavery to zero by 2030, requiring a reduction of 10,000 individuals per day. 
• The United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) AML/CFT Priorities Statements include Human Trafficking and Human Smuggling.
• The new sixth European Union Anti-Money Laundering Directives (6AMLD) implemented in 2021 and updated in 2022 harmonized the definition of predicate offenses including human trafficking for the first time. 

With this partnership, financial institutions can play their critical part in delivering on national priorities, leveraging it as part of their AML reform programs to address current and prepare for future mandates.

2. Regulatory scrutiny: Combatting illegal activity, including human trafficking, is a core part of AML programs, with failures to do so resulting in high profile fines and reputational damage. Financial institutions can now take advantage of existing expertise on human trafficking typologies and operationalize these into their AML programs to systematically reduce risk exposure.

3. Technology and actionable intelligence are now available: the source of human trafficking crimes in financial transactions are inherently hard to identify. We can now combine the intelligence and research of financial crime experts with award winning behavioral analytics and technology that can see signals through the noise.

Dave Excell, Featurespace Founder: “This valuable partnership forms an important part of Featurespace’s ongoing commitment to providing banks and financial institutions with the very best technology to solve the enterprise financial crime problem. RedCompass Labs is leading the way in tackling one of society’s most gruesome crimes, and giving our customers access to this capability is simply the right thing to do.” 

How it will work

Banks and financial institutions will have access to RedCompass Labs’ RedFlag Accelerator when they deploy Featurespace’s ARIC Risk Hub. The library of typologies will be integrated into Featurespace machine learning models and adaptive rule sets. Once deployed, RedFlag Accelerator insights will be leveraged within the Featurespace UI to provide an extra layer of analysis to each transaction, automatically creating indicators – also known as, “red flags” – for those deemed suspicious. 

RedFlag Accelerator includes many specific scenarios, such as sexual exploitation perpetrator, labor exploitation perpetrator, labor exploitation in multiple-victim housing, and sex trafficking network operative. The scenarios also include human trafficking data sets such as high-risk trafficking countries and high-risk businesses and activities.   

RedCompass Labs will also offer Featurespace and its clients advanced consulting services as needed to develop and implement specific ARIC Risk Hub models and rules, and client banks will have access to the complete RedFlag Accelerator Web Portal.  Featurespace is also partnering to support joint clients on custom projects in specific topic areas, including AML transaction monitoring in real-time for instant payment schemes.