Nearly six in ten (59%) financial crime practitioners in Asia Pacific identify crypto, virtual asset activity and mule or scam flows as the most difficult compliance typologies to manage, according to new poll findings from LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

The findings, drawn from 129 respondents across banks, fintechs and payment service providers in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Malaysia, reveal two distinct financial crime realities emerging across the region.

Two risk realities across the region

In high-volume payment markets such as the Philippines and Malaysia, institutions are grappling with fast-moving transaction fraud and crypto-related risks. In more mature financial centres including Singapore and Australia, the harder challenge lies in beneficial ownership opacity and sanctions evasion. Hong Kong sits across both realities, shaped by its emerging virtual asset service provider (VASP) licensing regime and its role as a cross-border financial hub.

Singapore stood out on ownership complexity: seven in ten local respondents identified beneficial ownership or sanctions evasion as their toughest typology to manage, compared with 22% in the Philippines and 40% in Malaysia. Nearly half of Singapore respondents (46%) cited data silos as their biggest strategy gap.

Disconnected data is the common thread

More than a quarter (27%) of all respondents across the region cited disconnected systems and data silos as their biggest strategy gap, limiting visibility across trade relationships and counterparties. In Australia, that figure rose to half of respondents — the highest of any market surveyed — reflecting a fundamental infrastructure gap that complicates detection of trade-based money laundering.

Rohit Mittal, Director of Financial Crime Compliance, Asia Pacific at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said the underlying challenge across markets is structural rather than transactional.

“Financial crime is increasingly network-driven, not transaction-driven. Across the region, institutions are dealing with different risk priorities, but the underlying challenge is the same. Risk often sits in the connections between entities and if your data sources are not providing sufficient visibility, those risks can be difficult to detect.”

Mittal added that collaborative intelligence sharing across institutions is becoming essential as financial crime grows more interconnected and multinational, since internal data alone increasingly fails to surface the full risk picture.