Hawk AI Appoints Napier Veteran Robin Lee APAC General Manager

Hawk AI, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology for fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) surveillance, has appointed Robin Lee as general manager for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

This appointment highlights Hawk AI’s commitment to expanding its operations in the APAC market, the company said in a Friday (Feb. 16) press release.

“I’m very pleased to welcome Robin Lee to Hawk AI,” Tobias Schweiger, CEO of Hawk AI, said in the release. “He brings deep expertise in regulatory compliance and outstanding knowledge of the anti-financial crime sector.”

Lee’s extensive experience in regulatory technology and anti-financial crime was gained from his previous roles at Thomson Reuters, LSEG/Refinitiv and at Napier, where he led that firm’s APAC operation, according to the release.

In addition, Lee currently serves as the vice chair for the APAC chapter of the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime and as the Global FinTech Liaison for the U.S. Department of Justice’s FinTech Sector Public Dialogue.

“I’m delighted to be joining Hawk AI,” Lee said in the release. “The Hawk AI platform is streets ahead of other vendors in the sector, with explainable AI that has been built-in from the ground up and an integrated approach to tackling financial crime that delivers truly extraordinary results for customers.”

Hawk AI’s modular solution offers AI-powered transaction monitoring, payment screening, perpetual know your customer (pKYC) and fraud prevention in real time, the release said.

The firm was founded in 2018, rapidly scaled globally and now monitors or screens billions of transactions worldwide, per the release.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that the surge in digital banking and faster digital payments has prompted banks to strengthen their fraud-fighting techniques.

Among the measures they are taking are investments in machine learning and AI technologies, according to “The State of Fraud and Financial Crime in the U.S. 2023,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Hawk AI collaboration.

Traditional approaches to defending against fraud and financial crime are no longer sufficient in today’s rapidly evolving landscape, Michael Shearer, chief solutions officer at Hawk AI, told PYMNTS in an interview posted Feb. 1.

Today, automation, AI and machine learning (ML) are crucial tools for organizing and connecting data to build a richer context and make better decisions.

“On the automated side, it’s all about data,” Shearer said. “It’s all about organizing and connecting your data together, understanding the signals that you have so you can build a richer context and make better decisions.”