London-based Neotas, a developer of online due diligence solutions for the financial services sector, and the University of Essex have partnered up to innovate new ways to prevent financial crimes and mitigate risk.
Innovate UK has also awarded Neotas a £200,000 grant to fund first stage of the project, which will build on Neotas’ existing solution.
The startup uses search techniques to analyse a company’s or an individual’s digital footprint to conduct background checks.
The project aims to make the screening process less labour intensive and automatically identify warning signs without creating false alarms. The incorporation of AI will enable the platform to take account of the context in which words or images are used – for example, to be able to tell the difference between an individual on a clay pigeon shoot or a terrorist armed with a gun.
Professor Ansgar Scherp and a newly recruited data scientist will join the project.
Scherp said, “The knowledge transfer partnership with Neotas will focus on the utilisation of a novel combination of natural language processing (NLP) and image analysis to accelerate and automate the collection of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), providing end users with advanced insight into individuals without invading individual privacy.”
Vipul Mishra (pictured), CEO at Neotas, added, “We’ve been working on our proprietary AI-driven platform for almost three years and have been building in machine learning technology to help pinpoint and mitigate risk, but this partnership with the University of Essex will take that to the next level.
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