London-based financial crime intelligence firm Themis has acquired fraud monitoring company Pasabi, in a move aimed to accelerate the use of AI in tackling one of the fastest-growing criminal threats facing businesses and consumers globally.
The deal, approved under the UK Home Office’s National Security and Investment Act, is set to fold Pasabi’s fraud detection tech into Themis’ platform, aiming to expand its reach beyond money laundering and due diligence into areas like fraud monitoring, social media scanning and transactional risk detection.
Founded in 2017, Edinburgh-born Pasabi has built an AI system capable of spotting suspicious behaviour patterns across platforms at scale.
Its ‘agentic AI’ technology, which deploys autonomous AI agents to flag anomalies in real time, has been used by marketplaces, financial institutions and insurers.
“Fraud has become one of the most pervasive threats in the financial crime ecosystem”, said Themis chief executive Dickon Johnstone announced.
“By embedding Pasabi’s AI into our platform, we’re making it harder than ever for criminals to hide, and easier for businesses and consumers to protect themselves. This acquisition turbocharges our mission to reduce the global impacts of financial crime”.
Why Pasabi, and why now?
The acquisition comes at a time when fraud is eclipsing many traditional financial crimes.
According to the UK’s National Crime Agency, fraud now accounts for around 41 per cent of all household crime incidents in England and Wales, while global losses from fraud and related crimes are estimated at $5.4tn (£4.01tn) a year.
Organised fraud networks increasingly resemble start-ups rather than back-street operations, operating sleek offices staffed by multilingual workers running investment scams and crypto schemes at large scale.
Yet, many rely on forced labour and trafficking to sustain their operations.
“Fraud is the single largest fuel source feeding global money laundering”, Johnstone told City AM. “It’s not just about protecting individuals from scams. Tackling fraud disrupts the financial lifeblood of organised crime”.
Johnstone claimed that Pasabi’s behavioural analytics technology will add a layer of fraud detection to Themis’ existing due diligence.
Regulators losing patience
The deal also lands against a backdrop of mounting frustration from regulators over banks’ failures to prevent financial crime.
In July, Barclays was fined £42m by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for mishandling client due diligence checks, including failures linked to the £46.8m Fowler Oldfield money-laundering scandal.
Just two weeks ago, Monzo was also slapped with a £21m fine for repeatedly opening accounts for high-risk customers.
Despite the billions banks spend on compliance, results remain anaemic. Interpol estimates that only 2 per cent of illicit financial flows are detected by the financial system each year, even as compliance costs climb by up to 10 per cent annually in developed markets.
“Much of the cost is tied up in inefficiency”, McKinsey warned in a recent report, highlighting how fragmented data and outdated operating models leave compliance staff wasting hours on manual checks.
The consultancy argued that agentic AI, of the type deployed by Pasabi, could be “the antidote” to the industry’s compliance malaise.
Financial crime has long been a low-yield, high-cost problem for banks, regulators and enforcement agencies.
For Themis, the challenge will be scaling responsibly. As Johnstone told City AM: “Trust is everything in financial services, and that means using AI in ways that protect people, not exploit them”.