Tragically, the process is treated entirely as a box ticking exercise. Incumbent AML systems are old and ineffective, and scores of investigators submit thousands of SARs (suspicious activity reports) to central policing authorities that 99.9% of the time are ignored until they help an ongoing case.
The process is neglected partly because it doesn’t generate money, it prevents fines, which are tricky to predict and a less obvious priority for upper management.
Launderers of any significant amount of money are savvy to the pitfalls of current systems. Best in class solutions can capture some money laundering schemes via watchlist screening and “suspicious looking”transactional patterns - but the limit is the data the company owns. The main issue is that money is spread across multiple institutions in multiple jurisdictions.
As systems to tackle money laundering become more effective, so too do the launderers.