Liminal Insights Report

Link Index for AML Transaction Monitoring 2025

07/08/25

Report Overview

As financial crime becomes more complex and enforcement tightens, transaction monitoring has become a cornerstone of modern AML strategy. What once served as a regulatory checkbox is now a critical defense mechanism against money laundering, sanctions violations, and cross-border fraud.

Still, many transaction monitoring systems are stuck in the past: reliant on legacy rule engines, siloed data, and manual reviews that slow teams down and miss emerging threats.

In the first quarter of 2025 alone, 25% of institutions were fined for transaction monitoring failures. Meanwhile, 40% of alerts still require manual review, stretching compliance teams thin and increasing operational costs. Add to that the fact that only 10% of institutions feel they’re ahead of regulatory expectations when deploying AI, and the need for smarter systems becomes clear.

The Link Index™ for AML Transaction Monitoring benchmarks the vendors solving these challenges with real-time detection, advanced risk analytics, and AI-native automation. Built from proprietary buyer demand signals, technical product assessments, and expert insight, the Index helps decision-makers cut through the noise and choose solutions that actually work.

Key Takeways:

Transaction monitoring is now mission-critical: With rising enforcement and evolving threats, 92% of institutions are investing in real-time monitoring, up from 60% just two years ago.
Legacy systems are falling short: Despite automation efforts, 40% of alerts still require manual review, with only modest improvements in sight.
AI is changing the game: Adoption is set to double as more institutions turn to AI for faster, smarter detection.
The leaders are built for speed and scale: This Index highlights the top 18 of 121 vendors delivering real-time detection, automation, and seamless AML integration.

Methodology
The Link Index offers a detailed analysis and ranking of leading vendors for specific use cases, leveraging robust data and insights from Liminal’s market and competitive intelligence platform, Link. Liminal’s research team invites solution providers to participate in a company survey and analyst briefing. It uses a proprietary framework to assess and rank product capabilities based on their relevance to market needs. Liminal’s Digital Identity Landscape taxonomy and ontology are central to the Link Index, which precisely evaluates vendor solutions by buyer demand, product capability, and market presence. Liminal conducts a rigorous survey among buyers in the vendor selection process to identify the most in-demand product capabilities and the most valued product components. Market presence criteria included buyer satisfaction, market penetration, and brand recognition. The Link Index was designed to be used to inform go-to-market strategy and execution and provide guidance for solution buyers, specifically:
- Executives in corporate strategy
- Leaders of go-to-market execution
- Practitioners of solution implementation