Transforming Public Sector Financial Background Investigations

The Role of AI-Enhanced Financial Data

Financial background investigations are nuanced and filled with significant challenges for public sector investigators. Use cases for financial background checks include Medicaid fraud cases, gaming commission licensing, and even the Department of Defense for security clearance and vetting process needs. The challenges that any public sector agency experiences during these investigations stem from the large volumes of financial data, limitations in resources, and outdated technological support. The comprehensive obstacles faced by financial investigators underscore how AI-enhanced financial data can be game-changing. By integrating sophisticated tools and automated systems, investigators can significantly improve the efficiency and thoroughness of gathering and analyzing data, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of financial background investigations.

Decoding Complexities: The Nuances and Challenges of Financial Background Investigations

Data Complexity

• Complex Financial Entities: Investigators often encounter individuals with elaborate financial setups, such as dozens of bank accounts, investment accounts, and assets spread across domestic and international lines, and ownership of multiple companies, making the vetting process for some individuals much more complex than others. It's challenging to compile a complete financial profile, especially when facing advanced financial structures designed to hide ownership details or obscure transactional records.
• Evaluating Applicant Sources of Funds: The vetting of income and/or deposits  is a critical step in conducting thorough financial background investigations. The process of cross-checking documents such as bank statements, tax returns, or investment summaries is time-intensive and demands considerable resources, particularly when the data volume is large or the formats are diverse.
• Evaluating Applicant Uses of Funds: The assessment of how funds are being spent is equally critical in conducting thorough financial background investigations. Investigators need to scrutinize expenditures to identify any irregular or potentially suspicious activities. This process involves examining records such as credit card statements, loan payments, and large purchases. It is particularly challenging when individuals have complex financial arrangements, such as multiple properties, luxury assets, or significant international transactions. The meticulous review of these spending patterns is time-intensive and requires considerable resources.

Resource Limitations

• Financial Constraints: Public sector agencies tasked with financial investigations usually operate under strict budgetary constraints, which may affect their ability to invest in necessary technology, specialized personnel, and ongoing training. These financial limitations can lead to staffing issues, outdated technological tools, and more surface-level background investigations, such as skimming over statements for potential unusual activity.
• Personnel Shortages: Hiring and retaining individuals skilled in financial analysis, forensic accounting, and investigative methods is challenging and extremely cost-prohibitive, especially in a competitive employment market. In addition, many agencies are experiencing higher than normal employee turnover or retirement, and given historically low unemployment rates, recruiting remains a significant challenge. These staffing issues can lead to heavier workloads for existing employees who are not specialized and are overwhelmed with tedious number-crunching, as well as longer times required to complete background investigations. 

Technological Challenges

• Aging Systems and Infrastructure: Many agencies continue to rely on aging systems and infrastructure to manage, store, and analyze financial data. These older systems do not take the complexity out of financial data and often lack the capability to process large datasets effectively, necessitating significant investments for upgrades.
• Integrating and Analyzing Data: Financial background investigations typically require merging and analyzing information from various sources, such as banks, governmental databases, and open-source intelligence. The diversity in data formats and standards poses a challenge in effectively combining and examining the data.

Real-World Instance: Gaming Licensing

In some states, the licensing procedure involves detailed financial background checks carried out by a compact, specialized team of agents. During these investigations, the team grapples with extensive financial data, potentially employing data sampling—a tactic where they may “skim” the evidence due to time constraints and/or the abundance of financial information to review. Sampling not only makes the process less comprehensive, but it still consumes many hours and lacks the thoroughness that a complete record-by-record review would offer.

The range of applicants spans from prominent tycoons to local “mom and pop” slot machine owners, many of whom have complex financial profiles featuring numerous accounts and international connections. Despite efforts to optimize both efficiency and precision, the detailed nature of this manual financial analysis process requires significant time investment to arrive at a conclusive assessment.

Follow the Money Faster with Artificial Intelligence: Enhancing Speed and Precision

Data Verification Techniques

Data verification is an essential component of financial investigations, ensuring the precision and dependability of data under review. By integrating technology, this process becomes significantly faster and more effective.

With Verified Financial Intelligence (VFI) platforms like Valid8, experts can input diverse financial records like bank and credit card data statements, images of checks, deposit records, and brokerage statements into an advanced validation system. Investigators get simplified financial reports from these systems and can quickly compare tax and other financial documents to the VFI’s findings, accomplishing comprehensive data validation in a matter of hours instead of the traditional days to weeks or even months.

AI-enhanced financial data can swiftly pinpoint transactions that trigger concerns, allowing investigators to optimize their time use. Rather than manually examining extensive datasets, they can devote their efforts to more critical analytical tasks, such as pattern recognition, anomaly detection, and probing into questionable transactions.

This compressed time-to-opinion not only speeds up the investigation process but also boosts its precision, dependability, and completeness. Professionals are able to make better-informed decisions based on validated data, minimizing the chance of missing vital details or making erroneous assumptions.

In-depth Analysis Through AI-Enhanced Financial Data

Automated technologies powered by AI play a crucial role in expediting the analysis phase by providing tools for categorization, visualization, and comprehensive reporting:

• AI Categorization: This technology enhances the analysis process by automatically sorting transactions, separating transactions of interest and grouping them into collections, linking related activities, and quickly retrieving specific data, reducing the time needed for manual review.
• Visualization Tools: These tools are instrumental in illustrating financial data flows, enabling reviewers to spot inconsistencies and anomalies quickly and efficiently.
• Robust Reporting: Advanced systems offer robust reporting capabilities, allowing teams to generate detailed, customized reports that document the investigative steps clearly and provide authoritative evidence of the investigation's thoroughness.
• Transfer Matching: This technology allows you to efficiently match money movement between accounts within minutes. It identifies data discrepancies and undisclosed accounts, providing a clear view of sources and uses of funds through automatic visualization. Additionally, it enables the matching of payee and payor information from checks to associated bank transactions within just a few hours, streamlining the verification process and ensuring accuracy.

Navigating Challenges with Innovative Solutions

While financial background investigations involve numerous complexities, such as intricate financial setups, resource limitations, and technological deficits, adopting AI-enhanced financial data can lead to viable outcomes. By integrating automated verification, AI categorization, and sophisticated reporting tools, investigative teams can streamline their processes, focus on essential analysis tasks, and achieve more thorough and timely results. As financial crimes evolve, the integration of updated technology becomes crucial, transforming the scope and effectiveness of these investigations. This shift is not just about adopting new tools but revolutionizing the approach towards financial security and integrity in an increasingly complex world, making the synergy between financial expertise and technological innovation a cornerstone of successful and efficient financial investigations.

If you’d like to take the first step toward streamlining financial background investigations, Valid8 can help you get there. Schedule your free 30-minute demo and let our team show you how you can reduce manual work and increase the thoroughness of your financial background investigations.