Reserve Bank of India pilots new MuleHunter.AI solution to help identify mule accounts
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is piloting a new AI and machine learning solution called MuleHunter.AI to help detect mule bank accounts and combat digital fraud.
RBI pilots new MuleHunter.AI solution
Mule accounts serve as intermediaries in financial crime, receiving the proceeds of fraud before transferring funds – often across borders – to another account.
These accounts create a network through which funds are more difficult to trace and recover, and are typically set up unknowingly by the victims of financial crime.
The RBI is attempting to tackle such networks through its new MuleHunter.AI solution, which was developed in-house by its subsidiary, the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH).
The solution uses machine learning algorithms to analyse transaction and account data and seeks to serve as a faster and more accurate alternative to the static rule-based systems currently used by banks to detect mule accounts.
The RBIH is currently piloting MuleHunter.AI with “two large public sector banks”, according to a statement by the RBI, with current tests said to be yielding “encouraging results”.
The RBI adds that banks are “encouraged to collaborate with RBIH to further develop the MuleHunter.AI initiative to deal with the issue of mule bank accounts being used for committing financial frauds”.
These developments align with the bank’s ongoing participation in HaRBInger 2024, its third global hackathon which it says includes a specific problem statement on mule accounts.
