Pegasystems buys intellectual property of AML outfit Focus Technology Group

This unique offering is designed to help the world's leading financial institutions combat money laundering, manage sanctions reviews, support fraud investigations, and manage Bank Secrecy Act and USA Patriot Act compliance - all with an unprecedented combination of efficiency and power.

Traditional solutions in this challenging and increasingly complex arena are specialized and disconnected, addressing specific types of suspicious activity in particular parts of an organization. Alerts from such disparate systems may not be qualified or treated in a consistent fashion or acted on in the context of the entire enterprise. In contrast, the Pegasystems solution leverages and integrates with existing systems to provide a cross-organization alert and investigations management system. The Pegasystems solution will help financial services customers:

• Gather and manage suspicious activity alerts generated from diverse fraud, money laundering, sanctions and employee fraud detection systems across multiple business and product lines;
• Dramatically increase investigator productivity and significantly reduce operational costs through sophisticated process automation;
• Quickly identify patterns and trends across the organization's business operations through dynamic Link Analysis and Visualization tools; and
• Easily comply with external regulations and audit requirements through automated documentation and SAR reporting, transparent internal controls, built-in audit capabilities and real-time dash-board reporting.

Financial organizations are challenged by the rapid pace of change present in risk, fraud and compliance operations. With this new solution framework, Pegasystems customers will leverage the strategic advantages of Build for Change® technology to reduce operational costs, improve transparency across organizational silos and decrease risk.

Pegasystems also announced the acquisition of intellectual property and key personnel from Focus Technology Group, a Massachusetts-based fraud and AML software company. This acquisition adds to the tremendous domain expertise and value that Pegasystems brings to the market for risk, fraud and compliance solutions.

"Financial institutions today face unprecedented challenges in detecting and managing fraud and AML events. These challenges cannot be overcome by traditional systems that have created splintered environments for risk operations," said Willy Fox, Senior Director of Financial Solutions for Pegasystems. "Pegasystems customers, in contrast, are realizing significant results through an investigations backbone that leverages the power of these disparate detection systems to gain organization-wide visibility into previously unrelated events. Through centralized suspicious activity management and advanced process automation capabilities, our customers improve operational effectiveness and dramatically reduce risk. The recent addition of expertise and technology from Focus Technology Group is another demonstration of our ongoing commitment to delivering high value solutions in mission-critical areas like risk, fraud and compliance."