WorkFusion is a regulatory technology provider for banking and financial services organizations. Its pre-built AI Digital Workers automate document-heavy and time-consuming work aligned to specific job roles within financial crime compliance like anti-money laundering (AML), adverse media and sanctions screening alert review, transaction monitoring, and Know Your Customer (KYC). Pulse 2.0 interviewed WorkFusion CEO Adam Famularo to learn more about the company.
Adam Famularo’s Background
What is Adam Famularo’s background? Famularo said:
“I have been CEO of WorkFusion for the past two and a half years and a tech executive for over 25 years. What intrigued me most about WorkFusion when I came on board was its brilliant AI technology, which was born out of MIT Labs. I saw our core technology expertise, AI combined with intelligent document processing (IDP), as an ‘aha moment’ — as something that could change the industry. After spending months talking with customers to find the best use cases for our technology, we quickly learned that our sweet spot was tackling financial crime and regulatory compliance. We developed AI Digital Workers to augment financial services’ teams to automate document-heavy and laborious work, such as anti-money laundering, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring.”
“My passion lies in solving complex problems with the help of technology. This passion led me to found a data governance software company called erwin, where I served as CEO for five years before it was acquired by Quest Software. Prior to that, I held executive positions at Verizon and CA Technologies.”
“As the CEO, my focus is centered around customers, employees, innovation, product development, investors, and leadership. I love meeting with customers and helping them address their pain points. Customer-first is my core value, driving everyone in the company toward that. Customers are at the heart of everything we do. Product development is how we support our customers, keeping them front and center, building products they need, and continuing to innovate. We are constantly evolving.”
“I love working with our employees and really rolling up my sleeves — teamwork is critical. Establishing a strong and positive company culture is important to me. It defines who we are and how we perform. I try to lead by example, including establishing an environment where employees can learn and grow. They will never be faulted for trying new things. I am big on learning and development. I encourage people to fail fast, learn from it, and move on.”
“I love sharing our story, milestones, and vision with investors. Every day is about focusing on our competitive advantage and executing on it.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Famularo shared:
“I would say it is bringing AI to life…almost literally! We personified the technology (much like Alexa is a product, not a person named Alexa) based on how its customers were using it. When I first joined WorkFusion, I did a customer roadshow where I saw that the most successful customers personified the technology, and some even had cardboard cutouts and had given the technology a name — treated them as an employee. That is how we came up with the idea of packaging the software up as AI Digital Workers and personifying the products with names and faces. This makes it easier for customers to onboard the technology and treat it as part of their anti-financial crime teams.”
“A big problem that many banks have is finding skilled workers for anti-money laundering compliance. The volume of the work is immense and it’s a highly regulated industry. Our AI Digital Workers help banks mitigate risk, improve compliance and dynamically scale their teams.”
“Evelyn and Tara are two of our AI Digital Workers that are in place at leading banks and financial institutions around the world, working alongside human colleagues. The AI agents each come off the shelf with the experience of an analyst with five years of experience and they handle labor-intensive work such as adverse media monitoring, sanctions screening and transactions alert review. This process is typically done manually and is time-consuming and error prone, with 99 percent of the alerts being false positives. Evelyn can accurately review false positive alerts at superhuman speed to identify a true potential risk faster and with greater accuracy — helping analysts and compliance teams reduce errors by 70-90 percent.”
Core Products
Screenshot
What are the company’s core products and features? Famularo explained:
“We offer AI Digital Workers that help banking and financial services organizations fight financial crime. Simply put, our goal is to stop the bad guys. We do that by automating document-heavy and time-consuming work, particularly in anti-money laundering. Our AI Digital Workers come out of the box with about five years of experience and cover a range of job roles, including sanctions screening alert review, adverse media monitoring, transaction monitoring investigations, customer service, and KYC. Financial institutions “hire” AI Digital Workers for risk management, program efficiency, and staffing.”
“Our AI Digital Workers work around the clock to improve an organization’s risk posture, particularly around AML compliance. With the AI agents, attrition and volume spikes have zero impact on operations, and analysts can spend 90 percent more time on challenging and rewarding work. Customers also gain speed with onboarding, accelerated time to decision regarding escalations, thorough audit trails and detailed narratives for regulators, and cost savings.”
“We have more than 60 financial services customers, including four of the five top U.S. banks, and renowned institutions like Deutsche Bank and BMO. Our solid client base demonstrates the trust and confidence that these industry leaders have in our AI Digital Workers.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Famularo and the team faced in building the company? Famularo acknowledged:
“Absolutely. When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out in February of 2022, 65 percent of our workforce was in Belarus and Ukraine. We had to move into an employee-first mentality quickly. We put everything else on hold and focused on caring for our people and their families and ensuring their safety. Fortunately, we were able to stabilize and relocate our people rapidly. This was a big challenge for me as the company leader and for us as a company — and ultimately made us a stronger business as a result.”
Evolution Of WorkFusion’s Technology
Q.) How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Famularo noted:
“We continually evolve our AI Digital Workers’ ability to help financial institutions beef up their anti-money laundering programs, fight financial crime, and support regulatory compliance. Since launching six AI Digital Workers in February 2022, including Evelyn, a sanctions and adverse media screening analyst, and Tara, a transaction screening analyst, we have rolled out two new AI Digital Workers including Isaac, an AI transaction monitoring investigator.”
“Isaac is an AI agent that assists with transaction monitoring alert management by using machine learning capabilities to handle first-level alerts, auto-escalate alerts that are likely to require investigation, and auto-closes alerts that are non-suspicious with supporting narrative and documentation. We also launched Kayla, who is helping banks transition from a traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) model to perpetual KYC.”
“We also collect feedback from the Taras and Evelyns working in the field to improve future models. We include the improvements in new releases.”
“This April, we added Generative AI enhancements to our AI Digital Workers. The new Generative AI capabilities increase automation rates up to 95 percent, reduce the risk of errors to nearly zero, and provide enhanced narratives to enable AML analysts to speed up time to decisions and provide a more detailed narrative to regulators.”
“Most recently, we launched Eveyln LT, a pre-built GenAI-powered agent for automating adverse media monitoring that acts like an “AI temp worker.” If Evelyn is akin to hiring full-time L1 analysts, Evelyn LT is like hiring a temporary or part-time worker. Evelyn LT delivers quick and immediate results on an on-demand, pay-as-you-go, or try before you buy basis Evelyn LT provides on-demand support for reviewing large volumes of transactions — whether it’s 100, 500, or 1,000 alerts — making her ideal for organizations needing extra help during peak periods. Evelyn LT processes adverse media alerts in as little as two minutes, compared to the 10-20 minutes it typically takes a human analyst.
Significant Milestones
Q.) What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Famularo cited:
“We have had numerous milestones in our history. A few recent ones include:
— In March 2021, we raised $220 million in funding, bringing the total to date to $341 million over seven rounds from 19 investors.
— We launched our first AI Digital Workers in February of 2022. They included Evelyn, an adverse media and sanction screening alert review analyst, and Tara, a transaction screening analyst.
— In October 2022, we expanded with a new European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
— In October 2023, we launched our new AI Digital Workers: Isaac, an AML transaction monitoring investigator and Kayla, a pKYC analyst.
— In November 2023, outside of AML compliance, we launched Work.AI, a no-code platform that combines the powers of AI/machine learning, intelligent document processing (IDP), and robotic process automation (RPA) allowing organizations to create an unlimited AI digital workforce by combining the power of the platform with their domain-specific expertise.
— iIn April 2024, we rolled out Generative AI enhancements to our AI Digital Workers and for the sixth consecutive year, Everest Group named us a Leader in their Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) Products PEAK Matrix® Assessment.”
— In September 2024, we partnered with Advanced Financial Solutions, part of the MDS SI Group, to drive AI Digital Worker growth in the Middle East. We also launched Eveyln LT, a pre-built GenAI-powered agent for automating adverse media monitoring that acts like an “AI temp worker,” providing on-demand support for reviewing large volumes of transactions — whether it’s 100, 500, or 1,000 alerts.
Customer Success Stories
After asking Famularo about company customer success stories, he highlighted:
“A large North American bank “hired” Evelyn, one of our AI Digital Workers focused on sanction screening, to transform its AML operations. This bank, with hundreds of locations across the United States and Canada, had an AML team of just 10 L1 analysts and faced a high daily volume of alerts and extensive backlog. With Evelyn, the bank was able to handle its 600-800 daily alerts for name sanctions and eliminate its 20,000 anti-money laundering alert backlog.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Famularo affirmed:
“Our biggest differentiation is our AI Digital Workers come pre-trained. Our machine-learning models have been performing compliance and regulatory work for the past five to six years. The beauty of what we have been doing is packaging all the work and making it standardized so that the models are getting stronger every day – human in the loop, network effect, updates.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Famularo pointed out:
“At our core, we are a customer-first-driven company. The majority of our product direction is based on direct customer needs and feedback. We are actively working with customers on perpetual KYC (pKYC) AI, to monitor and react to events whenever they occur and investigate them promptly. This approach ensures that our products are tailored to our customers’ specific requirements, making them feel valued and integral to our development process.”
“We also continue to hone our AI Digital Workers and their learning algorithms, so they will be even better at their specific job functions. Also referred to as Narrow AI, we design AI to increase knowledge to perform a single task better.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Famularo concluded:
“The strategy of companies “hiring” technology is increasingly critical, especially hiring AI for highly skilled work to free up employees to do what they do best: create and innovate. AI can provide reasoning for decisions and provide detailed documentation for organizations in highly regulated industries, such as banking. Those capabilities are critical for compliance and audits. We will soon see the shift in how people and technology work together, with companies embracing the “three-legged stool” approach: Generative AI + classic AI + people to form hybrid teams.”
