Define the AML Objectives

Decide what you want AI to detect:

• Suspicious transactions

• Fraud patterns

• Structuring (smurfing)

• Terrorist financing

• Unusual customer behavior

2️⃣ Collect and Prepare Data

You need:

• Transaction history

• Customer KYC data

• Account details

• Past suspicious activity reports (SARs)

• Blacklists / sanctions lists

Clean the data:

• Remove duplicates
• Handle missing values
• Normalize amounts

Create time-based features

3️⃣ Feature Engineering (Very Important)

Examples:

• Number of transactions per day

• Average transaction size

• Sudden spike in activity

• Transactions to high-risk countries

• Rapid money movement between accounts

These features help AI detect patterns.