AI and public-private cooperation to combat financial crime
21 April 2026
Addressing financial crime today means tackling increasingly complex schemes, often spread across multiple entities and jurisdictions, requiring advanced data analysis capabilities and the sharing of approaches and expertise.
Within this context, the pilot project developed by Intesa Sanpaolo together with the Anti Financial Crime Digital Hub – a consortium established by the Bank in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, Politecnico di Torino and University of Turin – represents a public-private collaboration aimed at improving the detection of suspicious transactions, including through the development of algorithms based on artificial intelligence techniques.
The initiative also involved the Guardia di Finanza (Italy’s financial police), the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (Italy’s anti-mafia investigative directorate), the Bank of Italy and the Financial Intelligence Unit for Italy.
Artificial intelligence and public-private collaboration
The pilot project represented the first significant public-private partnership initiative in Italy to combat financial crime. Following this experience, the Bank of Italy, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Italian Banking Association (ABI) promoted the launch of a nationwide partnership involving all major banks in the country.
The initiative led to the development of an algorithm based on artificial intelligence techniques applied to transaction monitoring, with a specific focus on tax fraud schemes involving false invoicing.
The project is grounded in the sharing of expertise and information between financial operators and authorities, with the aim of strengthening analytical and prevention capabilities.
This collaboration made it possible to:
- improve the effectiveness of suspicious transaction reports
- define more effective parameters thanks to the contribution of authorities
- detect complex schemes through dedicated models
The pilot involved over 40,000 corporate customers in Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta and enabled the identification of more than 30 potential tax fraud cases.
"Thanks to new European anti-money laundering legislation, which sets out the criteria under which banks will be able to share data on higher-risk customers, important new opportunities for system-wide cooperation are emerging, with the aim of more effectively countering criminal activities that rely on complex schemes involving multiple financial operators"
Piero Boccassino, Chairman, Anti Financial Crime Digital Hub
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Last updated 21 April 2026 at 13:08:53
