Three-quarters of financial services firms say they still use manual risk assessments to assess financial crime across their business, a survey by PwC has found.
Only 3% said they use fully-automated risk assessment processes.
Just over half of firms said they had automated some aspect of their onboarding of new customers while less than a third said they were planning to invest in anti-money laundering in the year ahead.
The report suggests that more automation could be used to strengthen the fight against financial crime.
The management and oversight of Anti-Money Laundering Frameworks are a key focus for financial services regulated firms in Ireland.
The survey was carried out across more than 60 businesses in the financial services industry including funds, banking, credit servicing, payments and E-money firms.
"Financial firms are obliged to carry out a risk assessment to measure the potential risk of money laundering in their organisations," Sinead Ovenden, Risk & Regulation Partner at PwC Ireland, said.
"Most firms do this on an annual basis which can take many months to complete. The data is then often out of date and does not inform a firm of the up to date risk. Increased automation will enable firms to better mitigate financial crime on a real time basis," she concluded.
