Cybercrime, AI, and Collaboration: Takeaways from Financial Crime 360

By James Leather

13/11/2025

James Leather, representing treasuryXL, recently attended Financial Crime 360 in London. He was pleased to participate, learn from experts, and connect with industry peers. We asked him about his experience!

Which part of the event surprised you most: a speaker, demo, or conversation you didn’t expect?

Two things stood out:

I found the “Fraud Frontier” stage fascinating, as it contained 20-minute sessions of real-life fraud examples. One of these sessions was titled “How to Build a Deep Fake”, where Nisha Aubeeluck of Decoded took us into the dark web, to create a deep fake in 20 minutes. Very worrying.

At lunch, I struck up a conversation with the person next to me, who turned out to be Pritie Billimoria from Stop Scams UK. This is an industry body funded by members’ fees, set up to stop the harm and loss caused by scams through facilitating cross-sector collaboration between firms in those sectors most affected, helping to overcome regulatory and legal hurdles. Pritie explained that:

  • Banks are the first to sign up (as they often suffer financial loss), followed by fintechs, telcos, and most recently social media platforms.

  • TikTok and LinkedIn had just signed up, showing the “whole-system” approach needed to combat cybercrime.

Treasury teams with UK exposures should consider this, and also whether similar bodies exist in other jurisdictions.

Did you see any tools or approaches at the event that could help treasurers strengthen fraud risk controls or AML processes?

Yes, I spotted three key observations;

  • The importance of sharing data—and data insights (this aspect is championed by Nvidia as it leans on AI)—particularly pre-intelligence information sharing.

  • Some risks are linked, e.g., AML, Bribery, Corruption, Politically Exposed Persons, and Sanctions. This gives an opportunity for cross-skilling and the breaking down of silos (in some organisations, especially financial institutions, the management of these risks is handled by different teams), which also boosts productivity.

  • Europe is leading the way in the fight against financial cybercrime, with tokenisation taking a central role.

How was AI being positioned in the financial crime space? Any use cases that seemed ready for adoption, not just theoretical?

AI was front and centre as both a weakness and a strength in the fight against financial crime, especially cybercrime.

  • Strength: It possesses the processing power to perform a lot of checks, detections, and data insights, particularly in real time, to help in the race to keep ahead of criminals (although no concrete use case was given).
  • Weakness: It is also a weakness, being used and exploited by criminals. One example given was the California State Benefits office, which uses AI to verify photo IDs for online customers via a device camera. In this case, AI did not detect that the user had set up a false ID and used a wig in the device camera to match the ID. The point being that if we remove humans totally from the checking process, then we open ourselves up to this kind of problem.

Was there any talk about cooperation between banks, fintechs, regulators, or law enforcement that resonated with you?

Very much so. Tijs Broeke, chair of the Police Authority Board, stressed that combating financial crime and fraud requires public-private cooperation. A “whole-system response” is essential, with the tech sector fully involved.

Which regulation or compliance challenge was getting the most attention, and do you think it’s being addressed well?

The main tension discussed was between Data Protection regulations, which impose heavy fines for leaks and breaches, and the need for cross-sector data sharing between banks, telecoms, and social media organizations to fight cybercrime.

If you had to pick one message or idea from the event that might change how treasury teams think about financial crime, what would it be?

It would be the sheer scale of the problem, meaning treasury teams need to take it seriously and be proactive:

  • By 2025, the global value of cybercrime is projected at c$10.5 trillion, making it the 3rd largest “economy” in the world after the US and China.

  • Criminals are agile and share data quickly, while non-criminals often don’t due to Data Protection Acts and siloed working.

  • Treasury teams should actively participate in their organization’s data strategy, ensuring data sharing and security are integrated.

James Leather
MCT CertBALM® CGMA

Treasury Specialist
Director, Corium Treasury Limited

James provides corporate treasury services – from regulatory reform to financial risk management – through Corium Treasury Ltd.  Corium are currently providing consulting services to, Winterflood Securities Ltd.

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