Strategic advisory firm Global Counsel, working in conjunction with pioneering Privacy Enhancing Technology company Enveil, announced the release of a new report aimed at advancing the fight against economic crime. This pervasive challenge makes a $3.1 trillion dollar annual global impact and costs the UK economy an estimated £8.5bn each year.
The report, “Breaking barriers: How data sharing can transform the fight against economic crime,” examines how the government and private sector can prevent and tackle economic crime by providing greater direction on data and intelligence sharing. Commissioned by Enveil and the culmination of a months-long effort, the research shows that a broad consensus exists to advance fraud mitigation efforts that would create a hostile environment for criminals.
“The lack of a clear, collective focus on economic crime prevention policy and practices by stakeholders across this space was the primary driver for undertaking this research effort,” said Ellison Anne Williams, CEO of Enveil. “We live in a data-rich, technology-enabled world that is ripe with opportunity to evolve, and we’ve started to recognize areas where groundbreaking tools and capabilities can drive positive outcomes. This includes Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), which are currently being explored and leveraged in sandbox and real-world deployments on a global scale.”
The content of the white paper was sourced from interviews conducted by Global Counsel across a wide range of senior stakeholders from UK organizations at the forefront of economic crime detection, prevention, and mitigation. The authors specifically focused on cultural and policy barriers to better collaboration, data sharing, and technological innovation.
The research identifies four obstacles to data and intelligence sharing:
- A lack of clear incentives that address cost and regulatory risk: Firms want to help, but they need legislative clarity to make it easy and inexpensive to do so.
- Legal ambiguity: Firms need legal clarity, for example around terms such as ‘economic crime’, to help them manage legal risk.
- A better understanding of new technologies: Criminals move fast to adapt to technological change but firms sometimes are slow to adopt new methods, particularly third-party solutions such as Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs).
- A fragmented data-sharing environment: There are wide differences between cross-sector pilots due to inconsistent governance and data requirements where a standardized approach would make participation easier and lower cost.
Further, the report suggests progress can be made if the government and private sector provide greater direction on data and intelligence sharing. It offers three recommendations for action specific to the UK:
- The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) should run operational pilots, testing new technologies such as PETs, including a wide range of public and private stakeholders, to produce a common understanding of how technology can help.
- The Government should call time on voluntary agreements and mandate information sharing in the financial services sector.
- The Government should authorize the ICO and other regulatory bodies to oversee a standardized lexicon for UK data and intelligence sharing.
The current economic crime climate necessitates bold action by both policy makers and industry stakeholders — and a sustainable, near-term solution will be found at the intersection of policy, technology, and a commitment to action. This means working to leverage the cross-boundary data and technology-enabling capabilities that will allow stakeholders to collaborate and fight economic crimes more effectively.
Learn more about the research methodology and read the full report here.
