Novobanco Unifies Fraud and Money Laundering Defenses With New AI Platform
Lisbon, Friday, 6 March 2026.
Portugal’s fourth-largest bank merges fraud and money laundering operations into a single AI ecosystem, replacing legacy systems to drastically reduce false positives and enhance customer security.
Strategic Shift to AI-Native Defense
On March 6, 2026, Novobanco formally selected Feedzai as its strategic platform partner to execute a multi-year transformation of its financial crime prevention systems [1]. This initiative represents a significant technological overhaul for Portugal’s fourth-largest bank, which is moving away from fragmented legacy systems toward a unified, artificial intelligence-native architecture [1]. The deployment focuses on consolidating Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and fraud detection capabilities into a single RiskOps platform, a move designed to enhance the visibility of risks across the bank’s customer base and transaction flows [1]. By centralizing these operations, the bank aims to dismantle the traditional silos that often separate Know Your Customer (KYC), AML, and fraud teams, allowing for a more holistic approach to threat detection [1].
Enhancing Precision with Integrated Screening
A critical component of this modernization is the integration of Neterium’s watchlist screening capability directly into the Feedzai platform [1]. This technical synergy is engineered to improve the quality of alerts generated by the system, specifically targeting the reduction of false positives—a persistent inefficiency in compliance operations that often creates friction for legitimate customers [1]. According to the bank, the transformation is already delivering tangible improvements in investigation times and risk detection precision as of March 2026 [1]. Archit Chamaria, Novobanco’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer, emphasized that managing fraud and AML risks in isolation limits effectiveness, noting that the interconnected nature of these threats requires the intelligence-led approach facilitated by this new infrastructure [1].
Operational Scale and Market Context
This technological upgrade supports a substantial operational footprint. As of 2025, Novobanco held €46.4 billion in assets and commanded a 9.2% market share in Portugal, serving 1.7 million customers through a network of 289 branches and business centers [1]. The partnership with Feedzai has evolved progressively; it began in 2023 with a focus on protecting digital channels via Digital Trust solutions and expanded in 2025 to include the AML suite [1]. This trajectory aligns with broader corporate developments, including the bank’s 2025 memorandum of understanding regarding its potential acquisition by BPCE [1]. With 4,081 professionals currently employed by the institution, the shift to an AI-driven platform is positioned to streamline internal workflows while bolstering security protocols against increasingly sophisticated financial crimes [1].