RIYADH: In a bid to reduce financial crime globally, Saudi tech company Mozn has signed an agreement with Google Cloud on the sidelines of the LEAP 2024 conference in Riyadh.
The deal will bring the company’s product “FOCAL” to the global stage, allowing financial institutions worldwide to utilize it, Mohammed Al-Hussein, the company’s CEO, told Arab News in an interview.
FOCAL is an artificial intelligence-powered anti-financial crime product that helps financial institutions combat fund-related crime, he explained.
“We’re proud that FOCAL right now is with a lot of financial institutions in Saudi and also outside of Saudi,” the executive said.
He outlined that financial crime is causing more than $200 billion in losses to the global economy, underscoring the need to reduce that number to benefit economies in the region and beyond.
Al-Hussein said: “Definitely helping reduce those numbers is extremely beneficial to all economies, whether it’s in the Middle East or across the globe. So what we’re doing, what we’re focusing on is how can we actually help reduce those numbers by providing software that can enable financial institutions and economies at large to prosper by reducing and limiting the impact of financial crisis.”
He added: “So now FOCAL, a Saudi product, is available across the globe through Google Cloud to where financial institutions across the globe can benefit from FOCAL to combat financial crime. So it’s this partnership focused on providing protection.”
Highlighting the growing prominence of the cloud and the need to protect it, the CEO outlined that many of the major players in the tech field are eager to use the cloud, saying: “Whether it’s Google, Amazon, Oracle or other cloud providers, they’re extremely excited to use cloud providers.”
The company is now looking to enable those cloud providers by making available AI software that can enhance the experience and attend to customers’ needs, whether in the financial sector or another division, he noted.
Al-Hussein said: “There is a lot of applications right now where we’re seeing already AI being very, very useful, for example, processing insurance claims. This is a process that takes a lot of time from a lot of people. That’s painful for customers, for hospitals, for insurance companies to make sure that decisions are being made reliably and also efficiently.
He added: “But right now, you know, AI is being adopted in such process to where we’re actually gaining benefits from that.”
The CEO concluded by highlighting the “tremendous opportunities” that AI allows for, especially on the enterprise level, saying: “If we look at, for example, a lot of processes that are that have historically been manually driven processes that involved a lot of experts opinions in order to drive that process. AI is enabling us right now to automate a lot of that processes.”
