Episode 2 - Banking and compliance: what customer behaviour reveals

Why customer behavior has become a key indicator 

In banking compliance systems, simply checking thresholds or supporting documents is no longer enough. Fraudsters have learned to blend into the rules. They break down amounts, automate operations and adapt their actions to the known limits of the system. 

This is why customer behavior has become one of the primary triggers for alarm. It's no longer what a customer does that alarms, but how he does it, when, with what consistency and in what sequence. 

An international transfer is not suspicious in itself. It is if the customer has never made one before, or if the transfer is part of a series of unusual actions:  

• Address modification 
• Add beneficiary

• Connection from another country 

It's the break in logic that signals a risk. 

This evolution responds to an operational reality: fraudsters no longer act in isolation. They test loopholes in micro-gaps and exploit the blind spots of static devices. 

Compliance tools must therefore follow a sequential logic, be based on an evolving customer profile and interpret behavioral data rather than simply financial data. 

By integrating these parameters, banks can refine their detection, reduce false positives and prioritize alerts according to actual behavioral scoring. 

Weak signals and risk behavior typologies 

Identifying suspicious behavior is no longer a matter of spotting an obvious infraction. In a modern banking compliance logic, it's about interpreting subtle deviations, often hidden in a sequence of apparently normal actions. These are known as weak signals. 

A weak signal is an isolated behavioral anomaly which, taken on its own, does not warrant an alert. But when placed in the context of a dynamic customer profile, it becomes revealing. For example, an unusual transfer to a new IBAN, a sudden spike in activity on a dormant account, or a rapid change in several personal details. 

Banking institutions establish a customer behavior profile, based on transaction patterns, device usage or connection channels. Any significant deviation from this profile generates an alert: this is what TransUnion 's experts describe in their approach to bank fraud detection. 

Certain types of behaviour are now well identified in compliance systems: 

• Split profiles: increasing numbers of micro-transactions to bypass classic thresholds 

• Unstable profiles: frequent changes in coordinates, devices or access channels 

• Split profiles: repeated transfers between linked accounts, sometimes within the same institution 

• Geo-inconsistent profiles: connections from several countries in a short space of time, with no logical justification 

• Opportunistic profiles: "normal" behavior for several months, followed by sudden high-impact actions 

These weak signals are often detected by cross-referencing several pieces of data. This is where scoring and behavioral analysis tools come into play. They can be used to weight deviations, and measure their intensity, frequency and standard deviation from the norm. 

The solution therefore lies not in intensive surveillance, but in the ability to structure signals, give them meaning and prioritize cases that are truly at risk. An approach impossible without well-organized data and tools capable of contextual interpretation. 

How RegTech solutions exploit this data 

Faced with the complexity of fraudulent schemes and the subtlety of weak signals, traditional compliance tools are reaching their limits. RegTech solutions enable us to move from a rule-based system to a data-driven logic. 

These technologies use multiple data sources: 

• Transaction histories 

• Connection behavior 

• Customer parameter changes... 

All this information is aggregated to build an evolving behavioral profile, capable of detecting subtle deviations from the individual norm. 

Using artificial intelligence, these systems analyze every action in real time, compare them with the customer's history, and then calculate a dynamic risk score. This score is then used to prioritize the signals received, eliminate false positives and focus efforts on truly critical cases. 

Another major advantage: traceability. Every alert generated is documented, contextualized and can be explained in the event of an inspection. Today, this operational transparency is essential to satisfy the demands of regulators. 

This is precisely the approach adopted by AP Solutions IO, a RegTech player specialized in banking environments. Their technology automatically detects behavioral deviations, generates qualified alerts and produces usable reports, integrated with business tools. 

By providing a structured reading of behavior, these solutions revolutionize banking compliance: they don't make it more cumbersome, they make it more effective. 

Towards predictive compliance: challenges and limits 

As fraudulent schemes become more complex, banking compliance must evolve from a reactive system to a model capable of anticipating abuses before they occur. This is what predictive compliance is all about: transforming today's weak signals into tomorrow's warning levers. 

Using cross-referenced behavioral data, dynamic profiles and intelligent scoring, banking institutions can now spot the beginnings of circumvention or misuse, well before it becomes an actual incident. This approach optimizes resources, reduces false positives and increases operational responsiveness. 

But this transformation is not without its demands. It requires rigorous data governance, transparent analysis criteria and close collaboration between compliance, business and technical teams. Predictive compliance does not replace the human element: it assists, guides and equips it. 

With this in mind, players like AP Solutions IO offer a structured, agile approach, where technology reinforces vigilance without dehumanizing it. Detection, scoring, documentation, traceability: everything is designed to integrate naturally into existing workflows, without complicating operations. 

Anticipating risks is no longer a luxury or a regulatory posture. It is now a factor of robustness, responsiveness... and confidence. 

Need to prevent drift without disrupting your operational flows?