Financial crime trends 2025–2030: From fraud detection to real-time collaboration

Criminals move quickly in financial crime, so institutions must move faster. The good news is that tools, regulations and collaborative frameworks have never been better. The challenge now is making sure that cultural mindset and operational readiness don’t lag.

At Salv we’ve seen what works, and we’ve seen the common obstacles. Most of all, we’ve seen how quickly things can shift when the right people are aligned. Here’s what we expect from the next five years of financial crime prevention, and what institutions should do now to prepare.

Key takeaways

• A fourth pillar of financial crime controls — intelligence sharing — is emerging
• Article 75 provides the legal foundation for cross-institution collaboration in the EU
• Culture, not regulation, is now the biggest barrier to adoption
• Criminals are scaling their operations through automation and mule networks
• Intelligence sharing use cases are expanding beyond fraud
• The future is predictive, not retrospective

Intelligence sharing: the fourth pillar of compliance

Every decade or so, a new category of controls emerges in financial crime prevention. After transaction monitoring, sanctions screening and risk-based onboarding, the 2020s bring a fourth pillar: intelligence sharing. Over the next five years, it will become a mandatory compliance expectation.

Unlike the controls that came before, this isn’t just about what happens inside your organisation. It’s about what happens between institutions. Intelligence sharing means real-time collaboration across banks, fintechs, and payment providers, working together to identify, investigate, and stop fraud and money laundering before the damage is done.

This isn’t theoretical. The regulatory foundation is already in place. Article 75 of the EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation explicitly supports partnerships for information sharing. PSD3 is expected to do the same. And in the UK, the direction of travel is similar.

Why culture matters more than regulation

If regulation is the spark, culture is the fuel. The biggest blocker to adoption today isn’t technology or legality — it’s internal hesitation. But in institutions where leadership backs intelligence sharing, we’ve seen rapid progress.

In Estonia, for example, early adoption was slow until CEOs stepped in and endorsed collaboration. That changed everything. Suddenly, compliance teams had permission to act. Other banks followed. What began as a cautious trial became a national model.

Current trends suggest that more institutions will move beyond “wait and see” over the next five years. Intelligence sharing will become a matter of industry norms and professional pride, especially as regulators begin to point to best practices and early adopters.

Criminal tactics are becoming more scalable

Fraudsters don’t stand still. But their methods don’t always change as much as people think. The underlying logic remains the same: exploit weak links, move quickly, stay just out of reach.

What’s changing is the scale and speed. Criminals are using automation, artificial intelligence, and networks of mule accounts to increase activity and reduce traceability. As long as financial institutions remain siloed, these tactics work.

But when institutions share intelligence — structured, timely, suspicion-based insights — the cost of crime goes up. Attacks fail more often. Accounts get shut down. Money is stopped before it moves. The economics of crime shift. A key approach to reducing fraud will be continuing to make it more expensive to commit.

Use cases for intelligence sharing beyond fraud

Right now, intelligence sharing is used to target specific use cases. For example, fraud recovery. But the underlying framework is far more versatile and capable of supporting multiple use cases across the financial crime landscape. In the coming years, it will support:

• Money laundering investigations
• Enhanced due diligence cases
• Sanctions enforcement
• Counter-terrorist financing

Regulatory structures support this, and so do operational ones. What’s needed now is confidence, shared examples, and further integration with adjacent systems, from KYC utilities to national-level compliance platforms.

Among our most advanced clients, we already see closer involvement from supervisors, standard-setters, and industry bodies. The more consistent the expectations, the more confident institutions will be in acting.

From retrospective compliance to predictive intelligence

Perhaps the biggest shift will be strategic. Over the next five years, the most forward-looking institutions will move from retrospective compliance, looking back to see what went wrong, to predictive intelligence, where real-time signals enable faster decisions.

This will be driven by three forces:

1. Stronger collaboration, both formal and informal
2. Structured data and process templates to ensure operational alignment
3. Integration with AI and automation tools to reduce noise and surface patterns

The outcome will be less duplication, fewer false positives, and faster intervention.

Looking ahead

The next five years will bring tighter regulations, more coordinated criminals, and higher expectations from regulators. But they will also bring an opportunity to reset financial crime prevention with enhanced collaboration. Institutions that act now won’t just respond more quickly — they’ll help define the future of financial crime prevention.

The foundation is in place. Now is the time to build on it.

Frequently asked questions

What is intelligence sharing in financial crime prevention?

Intelligence sharing means exchanging actionable information about suspected fraud, money laundering, or other financial crime between institutions. Instead of operating in isolation, organisations collaborate in real time — helping each other stop criminal activity before it spreads.

How does Article 75 support collaboration between financial institutions?

Article 75 of the EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation explicitly permits and encourages private-to-private information sharing for the purposes of financial crime prevention. It provides legal clarity for institutions that want to collaborate on ongoing investigations or suspicious activity — especially across borders.

Why is culture the main barrier to fincrime collaboration?

Most institutions already have the legal basis to start collaborating. What holds them back is internal hesitation: concerns about risk, uncertainty about process, or a lack of leadership support. Culture determines whether a team feels empowered to act — or stuck in “wait and see” mode.

How are fraudsters evolving their tactics?

Criminals are using automation, artificial intelligence, and large-scale mule networks to operate faster and more covertly than ever. While the tactics change in speed and scale, the logic stays the same: exploit weak links between institutions.

What intelligence sharing use cases does Salv Bridge support?

Salv Bridge supports a wide range of use cases, including:

• APP fraud recovery
• Money laundering investigations
• Suspicious entity and IBAN sharing
• Enhanced due diligence
• Sanctions evasion detection
• Counter-terrorist financing (CTF) coordination

What steps should I take to prepare for the future of fincrime prevention?
Start by aligning leadership on the importance of collaboration. Then, identify use cases where intelligence sharing could improve outcomes. Reach out to peers already sharing intelligence, and review available regulatory guidance like Article 75. Finally, consider a structured solution like Salv Bridge that enables secure, compliant collaboration at scale.