ComplyAdvantage, a U.K. startup that uses artificial intelligence to help banks and other financial firms with AML compliance received $8.2 million in venture capital funding for expansion in Europe and North America. It will open a sales office in New York this week.

ComplyAdvantage allows financial institutions to search prospective customer names through a proprietary database that includes lists of individuals sanctioned by entities ranging from the U.S. government to the United Nations and lists of known-criminals compiled by organizations like Interpol. It checks names against lists of politicians and government officials.

It also looks at data from regional regulatory authorities in several countries as well as information taken from press reports about crime. The system uses machine-learning to identify the names of people accused or convicted of crimes and weights what it uncovers according to the type of crime involved and whether the individual was actually convicted or merely accused or investigated.

The biggest problem with existing automated compliance systems, Delingpole said, is that they generate too many false positives -- finding individuals with similar names, for instance, even though they are not the person who needs to be assessed. He said that in trials with one client -- who he declined to name -- ComplyAdvantage was able to reduce these false positives by 60%.