The future of financial crime: Q&A with Dr Nicola Harding and Taavi Tamkivi

The first in a new series bringing together thought leaders across the financial crime world, Criminologist Dr Nicola Harding sits down with Taavi Tamkivi, Salv’s CEO and Co-founder, to reflect on two years of financial crime predictions.

Nicola and Taavi discuss insights covered in 2024 and 2025 editions of our Fincrime Time Machine, which pools industry predictions from practitioners across Europe at Revolut, TransUnion, SEB, Zempler Bank and many more.

Watch the full video below to hear Taavi and Nicola’s thoughts on how the predictions worked out, covering everything from APP fraud to fast AI adoption. You can also find the key highlights from the discussion later in this blog.

The importance of looking back in financial crime

Kicking off the conversation, Nicola asks why looking back matters. Taavi reflects on how retrospective thinking is key to designing the future:

“We need to analyse more consciously the trends which have happened and which will happen… because ultimately we are the ones designing the future of crime fighting — in terms of policies, procedures, technologies, operations, skills and so on.”

Both agree that taking stock helps us make sense of what’s changing — and what’s coming. Throughout the conversation, both Nicola and Taavi share predictions that worked out very differently in reality.

APP fraud is making AML great again

Taavi highlights how the rise of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, which he refers to as scam fraud, has brought new attention and resourcing to AML work:

“When scam fraud started to spike… I was afraid that the money laundering side would lose focus. But actually, what happened was that fraud and AML teams both leaned in. AML didn’t just keep its attention — it gained more.”

In Taavi’s words, “scam fraud is making AML great again” — helping quantify the impact of money laundering and giving the public something more tangible to understand.

“People understand scam fraud,” Taavi says. “Money laundering can feel too distant — but the scam makes it real.”

Governments are taking financial crime more seriously

Over the past two years, financial crime has steadily moved up the political agenda. For both Taavi and Nicola, this was a significant and surprising shift.

“It was a real surprise for me how big it’s become,” Taavi explains. “Governments are now creating task forces, passing new laws, and in some countries appointing dedicated ministers focused on APP fraud.”

He draws a striking comparison: “In the broader world, scam fraud is now seen as important as AI.”

Nicola connects the trend to the lived experience of ordinary citizens: “As scams scale, they start affecting everyday people. And if everyday people are affected, governments have to act.”

Together, they point to a growing recognition that APP fraud and money laundering aren’t niche financial issues — they’re national security problems. That shift is starting to reshape how countries organise their defences.

Is financial crime collaboration actually happening?

While the desire for intelligence sharing is widespread, the reality is uneven. This led Nicola to ask “How close are we to being able to really share intelligence or suspicions?”

“The Salv Bridge platform has been live for four years,” Taavi explains. “It’s used by large Scandinavian banks and other banking groups based in the Baltics. We just had another round of successful contract renewals following the first three year period, which shows how valuable data sharing is once it’s implemented.”

Outside of the Baltics, Taavi says that “Countries are moving at very different speeds. Some aren’t moving at all, others are already running RFPs and forming task forces.”

The overall direction is encouraging: “In about half the countries we’ve spoken with, central banks or banking associations are taking the lead. They’re building the legal and technical foundations for data sharing.”

Nicola asks what that means for investigators on the ground. Taavi emphasises that when collaboration platforms are in place, they become indispensable:

“One large bank described Salv Bridge as a mission-critical system — not because of regulation, but because it works. It helps with real-time sanctions resolution and fraud recovery.”

Taavi also explains that once the culture and tooling are there, collaboration evolves fast:

“Banks start using it across departments,” he says. “They bring new use cases, propose new workflows, and it becomes part of business-as-usual.”

NATO-style collective defence: collaboration over competition

“Fraud prevention is one of the only commercial sectors where your real competitor is the criminal.” says Nicola.

That creates a rare dynamic in an otherwise competitive sector. While banks may compete for customers, they are on the same team when it comes to fighting crime.

Taavi builds on the metaphor: “It’s like NATO. Countries still compete economically — but they collaborate militarily. In the same way, banks can compete for good customers but collaborate to keep out bad ones.”

AI adoption has happened faster than expected

Both Nicola and Taavi admit they underestimated how fast AI would move into financial crime work.

“A year ago I was quite sceptical,” Taavi admits. “But now I’m seeing senior people at banks accepting AI agents for first-level controls.”

Nicola agrees, adding that while the data challenges are still real, new flows and forms of intelligence are helping bridge the gap: “There’s still no gold-standard fraud dataset. We don’t prosecute enough fraud. Even if we do prosecute, we don’t give those signals back to the original investigators so they can validate whether their suspicion was correct or not.”

They both agree that AI’s advance will require better tools, processes, and cross-functional teams.

What skills do future fincrime teams need?

Looking ahead, Taavi feels that analytical talent is in short supply.

“We desperately need more data-driven analysts in the crime-fighting space.” he says. “Technologies are there. The data is there. But the people who can use both? There are too few.”

Nicola agrees and sees a broader opportunity: “We need more people who can combine social science and data science. Crime is a people problem. The future of prevention needs people trained to understand both the behaviour and the data.”