Strengthening SAR Readiness: What We’re Learning From Banks Across the Region

Over the past several weeks, our team at Level Five has been deeply engaged with banking partners across Malaysia and the broader Southeast Asian market. A clear pattern has emerged across these conversations: financial institutions are facing rising operational strain in their anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud investigation functions, particularly when it comes to Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) and Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) preparation.

Across banks of different sizes and maturity levels, the challenges sound strikingly similar. Alert volumes continue to climb. Investigations now span more channels, more actors, and more complex behaviours. And preparing a high-quality SAR, often a 7-10 page narrative backed by a meticulous audit trail, can take hours of concentrated effort from already overstretched compliance teams.

As one investigator told us: “It’s not that we don’t know what to do. It’s that we no longer have the time to do it the way we used to.”

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The Growing Need for Smart SAR Automation

In response to this industry-wide pressure, we have been assessing how modern automation and responsible AI can meaningfully ease the burden without compromising human judgement or regulatory integrity.

The goal isn’t to remove analysts from the process. It’s to support them, by:

• Centralising and structuring fragmented data sources that slow investigations
  
  
• Generating first-draft SAR narratives that analysts can refine
  
  
• Organising case files and investigative notes in a more efficient, auditable manner
  
  
• Enhancing consistency and clarity across reports
  
  
• Reducing preparation time while maintaining high levels of accuracy, privacy, and compliance
  
  

These early explorations align closely with Level Five’s broader mission: helping financial institutions strengthen digital resilience by modernising the way they detect, investigate, and respond to financial crime.

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Collaboration, Not Disruption

Our work in this area is currently moving from research into deeper validation with frontline investigation teams. The approach is intentionally collaborative. We are spending time inside real workflows, unpacking the nuances of how investigators make decisions, and ensuring any technology we develop is practical, secure, and easy to adopt within existing processes.

Rather than impose “AI for AI’s sake,” we are shaping the solution around real operational needs:

• Reducing manual effort without diluting investigative quality
  
  
• Preserving human oversight at every step
  
  
• Strengthening auditability for regulators
  
  
• Increasing team capacity in an environment of rising demands
  
  

This reflective, practitioner-first approach has long guided Level Five’s work in fraud prevention, risk operations, and cyber-resilience - and it’s equally crucial for SAR automation.

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A Regional Priority, and an Open Invitation

We will continue refining our thinking with banks across the region, and we look forward to sharing more as the work evolves.

If your institution is experiencing similar pressures, or if your compliance, fraud, or AML teams would like to contribute perspectives during this development phase - we welcome the conversation. The more we learn from practitioners, the stronger and more relevant the final solution will be.

As the industry braces for rising financial-crime complexity, now is the moment to strengthen SAR readiness in a way that empowers people, reduces operational load, and reinforces the trust the public places in every financial institution.

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