The global anti-money laundering market reached a value of $3 billion in 2020 and it is predicted to exhibit huge expansion between 2021 and 2030 (forecast period). The market is being driven by the surging incidence of money laundering cases and the burgeoning demand for monitoring money laundering activities. Additionally, the soaring information technology (IT) expenditure in several countries is also pushing up the requirement for anti-money laundering (AML) solutions across the world.

With the growing penetration of the internet and the rising adoption of virtual currencies, the number of money laundering cases is surging sharply across the world. Furthermore, the increasing utilization of online banking services, including online transactions and digital payments, has also contributed toward the mushrooming incidence of money laundering. This has, in turn, fueled the demand for AML solutions and software. Besides these factors, the increasing enactment of strict regulations regarding money laundering by the governments of several countries is also driving the expansion of the AML market.

Across the world, banks, such as Danske Bank A/S, are increasingly reporting incidents of money laundering, which is subsequently resulting in the imposition of heavy fines and penalties on them. The ballooning utilization of online banking services, increasing traffic over the internet, and digital transfer of funds through unidentified payment services are the major factors responsible for the increasing number of money laundering cases across the world. Owing to this reason, many governments are enacting stringent AML regulations and laws.

For example, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made its digital payment security regulations more stringent in February 2021 to improve security and ensure compliance by banks and financial institutions in the country. Depending on end-user, the AML market is categorized into insurance providers, gaming gambling sector, and banks and other financial institutions. Amongst these, the banks and other financial institutions category dominated the market in 2020. This is ascribed to the growing requirement for AML solutions among financial institutions and banks, on account of the increasing prevalence of illegal activities, such as frauds, money laundering, and phishing.

The market is also bifurcated into on-premises and cloud, based on deployment mode. Between these, the on-premises category contributed higher revenue to the market in 2020. Moreover, this category is expected to register rapid expansion during the forecast period, due to the greater preference for people for deploying AML solutions on in-house systems over deploying them on the cloud. This is credited to the fact that the on-premises deployment mode provides better control over various applications, platforms, and systems.

Geographically, North America dominated the AML market in 2020. This was because of the high penetration of the internet in Canada and the U.S., which massively augmented the requirement for AML services and solutions, and the large-scale adoption of various advanced technologies, such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AL) in the region. In addition, the existence of several market players and the high incidence of money laundering also propelled the requirement for AML solutions in the region during the last few years.

Hence, it can be safely deduced from the above paragraphs that the market will register huge expansion in the forthcoming years, primarily because of the rising prevalence of money laundering and the increasing implementation of stringent money laundering laws by the governments of many countries across the world.