Money Laundering Detection in Banking Transactions using RNNs and Hybrid Ensemble

The financial sector has witnessed significant transformations due to the emergence of financial technology (FinTech), transitioning from traditional paperbased processes to a dynamic digital ecosystem. Despite the industry’s advancements driven by FinTech innovations, concerns persist, particularly regarding financial fraud, notably money laundering. Perpetrators exploit modern technologies to launder illicitly obtained funds, posing a global threat to economies. Effective detection mechanisms for money laundering are crucial. This paper introduces a novel approach utilizing a recurrent neural network (RNN) for detecting money laundering in banking transactions. The proposed framework exercises standalone RNN models such as LSTM, GRU, BiLSTM, and stacked RNN models for the detection. Additionally, the effectiveness of hybrid ensemble models combining RNNs with XGBoosts is investigated. The evaluation achieves standard performance metrics, with the stacked RNN model achieving 92% accuracy. Surpassing it, the ensemble model achieves an impressive 95%. These results underscore the superiority of hybrid ensemble models over standalone RNNs, particularly in accurately detecting money laundering activities.