Yücel Ölçer

In the run-up to the Leaders in Finance AML event on 1 October in Amsterdam, we spoke with Yücel Ölçer, Global Head of Financial Crime & Fraud Prevention and Global Head of ING Hubs at ING. We discussed the rapidly evolving financial crime landscape, the opportunities AI and advanced analytics create for a more risk-based approach, the importance of industry-wide cooperation, and what he hopes to take away from the event.

Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your role at ING?
I joined ING in 2013 and have since held several leadership roles, including COO in ING Bank Turkey and Retail COO in the Group, with a strong focus on transformation, customer experience and large-scale change. Since January 2026, I’ve had a dual role as Global Head of Financial Crime & Fraud Prevention and Global Head of ING Hubs.
On the Financial Crime & Fraud Prevention side, our colleagues working globally, covering nine retail countries and our wholesale business. Our role is to help keep financial crime out of the banking system and reduce its impact on customers and society. On the ING Hubs side, our colleagues are providing services across technology, operations, risk, finance, compliance and many of the other that are critical to ING’s day-to-day delivery and long-term transformation.”

Looking at the broader AML ecosystem, what do you see as the most important developments?
Financial crime is rapidly evolving. Unfortunately, that’s being driven by increasingly sophisticated, organised and international criminals. New forms of fraud are emerging through AI, deepfakes and scams, creating large and highly organised criminal networks. Including ING, many European institutions are raising the alarm about the scale and projected growth of both fraud and financial crime.
At the same time, we also see enormous opportunities through technology. AI, advanced analytics and automation help us maximise the value we create for both our clients and our people. From a customer experience perspective, they enable more meaningful interactions, less unnecessary client outreach and faster, smoother onboarding.
At the end of the day, however, we’re here to keep ING and our customers safe from fraud and financial crime. Especially when it really matters, we need to be there for our clients. These are some of the major trends we see and actively work on.

One of the central themes of the AML event is balancing effective AML with cost efficiency. Where do you see the biggest opportunities?
It is a real balancing act that we’re all trying to achieve as an industry. For many years, effectiveness was almost the only criterion. Today, we’re moving towards a much more risk-based approach. That means focusing on the actual risks, rather than treating every alert the same, and concentrating on what really matters for our clients and for society.
That also means optimising operational activities, eliminating unnecessary reviews and duplicate processes, and reducing work that adds limited value from a risk-management perspective. Ultimately, that improves the customer experience as well.
To achieve that, we need to become even better at identifying actual risk. That includes using advanced modelling and AI for fraud detection, reducing false positives in transaction monitoring through advanced analytics, and moving towards a perpetual KYC model instead of periodic reviews every few years. This risk-based approach is more effective and more efficient – focusing effort where the risks are greatest allows the two objectives to reinforce rather than compete with each other.
We are making significant investments in the future of Transaction Monitoring. Across all our markets, we have already introduced secondary analytics, enabling our investigators to focus their attention where the risk is greatest. Our next step is to evolve beyond traditional rule-based monitoring towards continuously operating, intelligence-driven detection. By leveraging AI-powered models, we aim to identify real risks with greater accuracy and speed. In parallel, we are exploring the transformative potential of Agentic AI. Our ambition is to equip investigators with data-driven capabilities that reduce the time spent gathering and interpreting information, allowing them to focus on analysis, judgment, and decision-making.
Together, these innovations will significantly enhance both effectiveness and efficiency, helping us detect the right transactions, uncover complex networks of illicit activity, and direct our resources to the risks that matter most.
In parallel, in Customer Due Diligence, we’re investing heavily in machine learning-based risk assessment models. Rather than reviewing customers on a fixed schedule, these models identify whether new or additional risks require further review. By combining transaction data, changes in customer information, and broader macroeconomic developments, we can conduct genuinely risk-based reviews.
So yes, there are many opportunities to improve both effectiveness and efficiency.

Do you also expect these developments to reduce costs over time?
They will have an effect on costs, although that’s certainly not our first priority. We continue to prioritise customer experience and effectiveness well above cost reduction.
At the same time, advanced analytics and digitalisation will inevitably have an impact on our workforce, and we fully recognise that. That’s why we’re committed to cross-training and upskilling our people, whether their future careers continue within ING or elsewhere.
Internally, we have programmes such as AI for All, AI for Leads and Lead4Future that prepare colleagues across the organisation for what’s ahead. Encouragingly, the majority of colleagues whose roles have become redundant so far have been able to find another role within ING. We hope to continue that.
I think this will become one of the defining challenges for organisations everywhere. Executives need to create new opportunities that are enabled by AI, but people also need to be willing to embrace change. I already see colleagues leading that transformation by embracing advanced analytics, Copilot and other AI tools to improve the way they work. Those are the people who will help drive this change, whether that’s within Financial Crime & Fraud Prevention, elsewhere within ING or beyond.
So yes, over time these developments will also have an impact on costs, but that is not where we start.

Financial crime can only be tackled through cooperation. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for collaboration between private and public parties?
This is a very important topic. Ultimately, this is where we create real impact.
Day in, day out, we’ll always have suspicious activity reports to file and customer due diligence files to review. Those are largely internal processes. But where we truly create impact as an industry is by sharing information across banks, financial institutions, regulators and Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs). That’s how we create a much bigger impact.
It is a collective responsibility. AMLR, Article 75 in particular, is an important step towards greater harmonisation and stronger cross-border cooperation. There is still more that banks can do to share information and establish the right infrastructure, but there is also more that regulators and FIUs can do to create greater transparency and encourage information sharing.
We also need better mechanisms for sharing typologies, emerging risks and criminal patterns. And I see significant opportunities to collaborate more closely with social media companies, because that is where many fraud cases originate.
There is still a great deal to do. I believe everyone is willing and ready, but it takes time to build these collaborations.”

Looking ahead to the Leaders in Finance AML event on 1 October, what are you particularly interested in?
I’m really looking forward to the event. It’s broad, both in terms of the participants and the topics that will be discussed. Networking is certainly an important part of it.
I’m particularly pleased that AMLA will be represented. One of the questions I keep coming back to is how we, as a community, become more genuinely risk-based. Financial institutions, regulators and supervisory bodies all have a role to play in that discussion.
And, of course, AI and advanced analytics are topics that come up at every conference these days. What impact will they have? How do we adopt them while continuing to build on the expertise of our people? Finding that balance is something we still need to get right, and I’m looking forward to discussing it throughout the conference.”

Is there anything else you would like to add?
At the end of the day, when I speak to our teams, I always say that we’re here for our clients and for society. Whether we’re talking about AI, advanced analytics or making our processes more efficient, we should always keep a risk-based approach at the centre of everything we do.
That applies to our first line, our compliance teams and our regulators alike. The more we interact and the more transparent we are with one another, the better the overall system will become. I look forward to finding even more ways to make that happen.