SAS named market leader for AI-driven fraud & AML solutions

SAS has been recognised as a Market Leader in the latest Datos Insights assessment of fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) case management solutions.

The company was featured in the newly published Datos Matrix: Fraud and AML Case Management report, which evaluated nine notable solution providers in the sector.

SAS achieved the highest score for Vendor Stability, reflecting its longstanding operation in the global market and client retention rates that exceed 90 percent, according to Datos Insights.

The company also earned a top ranking for Product Features, specifically for the case management capabilities within its AI-powered financial crime management platform, which is built on the cloud-native SAS Viya platform. This platform incorporates SAS Fraud Decisioning for real-time detection, SAS Anti-Money Laundering for regulatory compliance, and SAS Visual Investigator for case management.

AI and risk management

Becki LaPorte, Strategic Advisor in the Fraud and AML Practise at Datos Insights and co-author of the report, commented on the increasing prevalence and complexity of fraud and money laundering schemes, noting the role of technology in combating these trends.

"As AI-fueled fraud and money laundering threats continue to grow in scale and sophistication, financial institutions need technology that unifies detection and investigation, underpinned by strong governance. SAS brings those capabilities together in a single platform that gives organisations the depth to address complex threats, the agility to adapt to evolving schemes, and the intelligence to drive faster, more accurate decisions."

The report draws attention to the convergence between fraud and money laundering activities, citing the difficulty for financial services organisations to tackle them separately. Datos Insights estimates that integrated case management platforms can increase investigational efficiency by up to 30 percent and enhance the quality of suspicious activity reports (SARs).

Case management capabilities

The report highlights SAS's strengths in AI-driven automation and its ability to merge fraud and AML functions. Specific mention is made of SAS features such as continuous risk monitoring, advanced entity resolution, and a "hibernation" function that temporarily suspends alerts while machine learning models collect evidence to progress or clear cases.

"SAS has taken convergence of detection and investigation to an eleven," the report states. "Its case management excels at leveraging analytics to automate investigative workflows, enhance model transparency, and accelerate SAR narrative generation."

Additional features cited in the report include generative AI tools for domain-specific tasks, SAR narrative support, synthetic data validation, conversational query interfaces for large language models, AI-enabled rule development accelerators, network-level alerting, and integrated quality assurance processes. Customer satisfaction with the platform's flexibility and functionality is also noted.

The report further states, "SAS delivers the architecture most appropriate for the type of fraud an organisation is tackling. Its breadth of features and extensibility make it a standout in the market."

Future improvements to the SAS platform, as highlighted by the report, will focus on large language model governance, scenario tuning, and optimisation of SAR processes.

Industry perspectives

Stu Bradley, Senior Vice President of Risk, Fraud and Compliance Solutions at SAS, discussed the benefits of unified detection and investigation for financial institutions.

"By unifying detection and investigation on a single, AI-driven platform, SAS cuts false positives and streamlines alert management, helping firms outpace adversaries and protect their customers," said Bradley.

He added, "With SAS Viya, organisations can deploy powerful, trustworthy analytics across the entire financial crime life cycle – from entity resolution to alert generation to SAR filing – with speed, transparency and confidence. And they can extend these capabilities to areas such as credit, liquidity and operational risk to manage risk more efficiently across the enterprise."

Integration in the sector

An industry survey of 850 financial crime professionals found that 78 percent viewed integrating their organisations' fraud and AML functions as critical, but just 16 percent had achieved such integration. Reasons for this gap were not detailed in the press release, but the figures underline ongoing challenges in the sector.

Further findings on adoption, challenges, and solutions associated with the integration of fraud and AML functions, as well as the adoption of AI and machine learning in AML compliance, have been jointly explored by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, SAS, and KPMG in a recent report.