Minerva Aims to Accelerate the Halt of Dirty Money Flow Using AI

Jennifer Arnold, having worked in the banking sector, witnessed the challenges financial institutions (FIs) face in detecting and preventing money laundering. In Canada, where intelligence agencies estimate significant annual money laundering between $45 billion and $113 billion, FIs are under pressure to assess clients’ risk profiles rigorously. Detecting illicit funds involved in activities such as gambling, embezzlement, and human trafficking poses a complex challenge for FIs, emphasizing the need for effective and sophisticated tools to combat money laundering.

Jennifer Arnold, along with co-founders Victor Tay and Damian Tran, launched Minerva, an artificial intelligence-driven platform designed to address the slow and manual process of assessing client risk in the context of anti-money laundering (AML) for financial institutions (FIs). Minerva aims to streamline the risk assessment process for FIs, helping them proactively identify client risk from onboarding to exit. The platform’s use of AI enables faster risk understanding, potentially disrupting the flow of illicit funds by providing real-time insights for FIs.

Minerva, initially focused on serving cryptocurrency companies, is expanding its reach to larger financial institutions (FIs) with the goal of assisting compliance teams in proactively addressing financial crime. The Toronto-based startup has raised funds through two funding rounds and partnered with Equifax Canada to support its mission of helping FIs stay ahead of illicit financial activities.

Minerva’s founders, Jennifer Arnold and Victor Tay, drew on their experience in traditional finance, having worked together at the Bank of Montreal. They collaborated on a transaction monitoring system for anti-money laundering (AML) and financial crime compliance. Recognizing the inefficiencies and laborious nature of existing risk management processes, they founded Minerva to develop an artificial intelligence-driven platform to streamline and enhance AML efforts in financial institutions. The traditional process involves investigators manually sifting through extensive client information from various vendor solutions, resulting in numerous false positives and data overload. Minerva aims to proactively identify client risk in real-time, addressing these challenges with AI technology.

Minerva, an anti-money laundering (AML) software platform based in Canada, aims to disrupt the flow of illicit funds by using artificial intelligence (AI) to help financial institutions (FIs) proactively identify client risk. Co-founders Jennifer Arnold, Victor Tay, and Damian Tran started Minerva after identifying inefficiencies in traditional risk management processes during their time in the banking sector.

The platform streamlines the AML process, enabling FIs to assess client risk in real-time and improve efficiency in compliance teams. Minerva, originally serving cryptocurrency companies, now targets larger FIs to combat financial crime. The startup has raised funding rounds and partnered with Equifax Canada to advance its mission.

Minerva is designed to do all this legwork for investigators, from the moment they receive a case. The platform collects, aggregates, and analyzes all of the relevant data points to create a client risk profile. 
Minerva’s platform examines data from a very wide range of publicly available sources.

Minerva, an anti-money laundering (AML) software platform, utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to proactively identify client risk for financial institutions (FIs). The platform compiles profiles by analyzing data from various sources, including sanctions lists, employment records, social media, business databases, and media sources in nearly 150 languages. Minerva has achieved 99.8% accuracy in profile compilation, with the process now taking less than 20 seconds. Although initially designed for Tier 1 FIs, Minerva found success in the crypto segment, securing customers like Binance Canada, Coinbase, and Mogo. The platform’s accuracy and speed enhancements make it a valuable tool in combating financial crime.