Mphasis amps AI-driven fincrime compliance capabilities with unique WorkFusion partnership

In June 2023, Mphasis, a mid-tier IT and business process service provider majority owned by Blackstone, launched Mphasis.ai. Mphasis.ai is an AI-focused business unit purported to “help enterprises leverage the power of generative AI to drive business outcomes and efficiency.” The company was not the first and most certainly will not be the last to take a similar approach focused on shamelessly surfing the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) hype rampant in 2023.

However, three months later, it did something unexpected: It inked a “partnership” with WorkFusion, a software company offering AI-enabled digital workers specialized in banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) functions. Partnerships are a dime a dozen—this one is relevant because it has significant skin in the game, essentially transferring WorkFusion’s professional services business to Mphasis in exchange for guaranteed annual revenue. HFS caught up with both sides of the respective deal to learn more.

Mphasis.ai is more than GenAI

We started with a look at the baseline. What is Mphasis.ai? While GenAI is part of the purview of Mphasis.ai’s capabilities, it’s really a reborn AI-focused business unit working across the canon of AI technologies. “Reborn” because Mphasis has been working with AI for the better part of a decade, yielding various AI-enabled solutions, including 250+ AI models currently available on hyperscaler marketplaces and an established network of AI-focused partners.

HFS verified 266 existing machine-learning models currently available on the AWS Marketplace. Reputationally, Mphasis is recognized as a purveyor of innovation, and its Next Labs have helped it develop and patent many AI and other tech-led innovations and frameworks over the years.

The Mphasis and WorkFusion partnership unites a mutual focus on BFSI

Financial services is Mphasis’ largest vertical. Founded by ex-Citi bankers, Mphasis offers a strong intersection of industry expertise and technology innovation. Fincrime compliance and related know-your-customer (KYC) capabilities have been part of its portfolio for almost 20 years. Mphasis has implemented and run anti-money laundering (AML) and KYC operations for various banks. HFS characterizes its fincrime compliance focus as a tertiary set of capabilities complementing its deep focus on BFSI innovation.

WorkFusion was also born into financial services, created to help financial services firms solve structured and unstructured data challenges with intelligent automation. The firm initially struggled to articulate its capabilities, though, and got swept up in the RPA noise of the prior decade. It seemed to find its identity with its rebranding around digital workers in 2022, where it smartly focused on the value it offers to its clients instead of its underlying technology.

Digital workers, such as its Sanctions and Adverse Media Screening Analyst and Transaction Screening Analyst, were well received by financial services firms as the need for sanctions ramped up around the Ukraine war. While AI has always been part of WorkFusion’s capabilities, business buyers did not easily understand it.

Activating the partnership relies on engaging business leaders, not IT

As for the particulars of the Mphasis and WorkFusion relationship, Mphasis essentially becomes the implementation arm for any direct WorkFusion business and, of course, anything sold through Mphasis. WorkFusion indicates it will maintain its sell-through relationship with other systems integrators (SI), essentially its indirect channel.

The people from the WorkFusion professional services team we mentioned are now rebadged as Mphasis. This team is now part of the broader Mphasis.ai business unit, adding a nice chunk of AI services expertise to the team plus the WorkFusion platform, Work.AI, to host and build new digital workers in the cloud, on-premises, and in hybrid deployments. There is a focused cross-pollination effort afoot, whereby fincrime compliance capabilities are being sold to existing and prospective Mphasis clients and Mphasis capabilities are being offered in a structured manner to existing WorkFusion clients.

The nuance here will be getting fincrime compliance and broader risk, compliance, and operations business leaders in the BFSI domain comfortable with AI. As the Chief Compliance Officer of a tech-forward community bank recently shared with HFS, “Regulators are calmer when fincrime compliance tech is not sexy.” Roughly half of IT budgets are owned by business leaders, and they care about outcomes and reputational integrity, particularly regarding regulators. Mphasis and WorkFusion have their work cut out to showcase the exciting potential of AI-led solutions to fincrime compliance leaders who are keen but conservative regarding AI.

The Bottom Line: Mphasis and WorkFusion have inked a unique partnership that can bring AI benefits to BFSI enterprises. BFSI enterprises need to keep their desired outcomes in mind.

2023 was the year of GenAI hype. 2024 is the year enterprises, with the help of their IT and business process services partners, focus on value and outcomes. The interesting, waste-no-time partnership Mphasis and WorkFusion put in place seems aligned with the mission of driving results. BFSI leaders, particularly those helming fincrime compliance programs desperate for resources, need to consider how AI-led solutions with appropriate responsible AI governance and human-in-the-loop capabilities can drive meaningful scale.

As the pace of financial services continues in a blur, with trillions of digital transactions combined with new business models and smarter criminals, fincrime compliance will continue to be an area of human resource scarcity.

AI is not an “if.” It’s a “when.”