Human Trafficking and Anti-Money Laundering: Why Suspicious Activity Reports Remain the Exception

Human trafficking is one of the most profitable forms of organised crime in the world. The International Labour Organization estimates that this crime, whose sole purpose is financial gain through human exploitation, generates approximately USD 236 billion in illegal profits annually.

Despite this alarming scale, financial intelligence efforts remain far behind what is possible. In Switzerland, the Money Laundering Reporting Office (MROS) received 5,334 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in 2020. By 2023, this number had risen to 11,876 - a significant increase reflecting improved reporting culture and regulatory pressure. Yet the share of SARs explicitly linked to human trafficking remained negligibly small: just 27 reports in 2020, rising to 79 in 2023 - consistently less than one percent of all SARs filed during that period.

This gap is not coincidental. It reflects structural weaknesses in today's transaction monitoring landscape.

Why Automated Systems Fall Short

A key reason for the low detection rate lies in the nature of the financial transactions associated with human trafficking. The individually transferred amounts are often small and do not trigger alerts in conventional rule-based monitoring systems. The problem is not a lack of transaction volume, it is a lack of the right patterns to look for.

The FIHATGuide, published jointly by MROS and the Office of the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, illustrates clearly how modern exploitation hides in plain sight: wages of migrant workers flow into seemingly ordinary personal accounts, are broken down into small incoming payments, then quickly withdrawn in cash or forwarded to dubious service providers abroad.

Behind these payment patterns, authorities frequently uncover networks that keep people in debt bondage and systematically exploit them. The structures are complex, the individual transactions unremarkable – and that is precisely what makes them so difficult to detect with conventional monitoring approaches.

Quality Over Quantity: What Effective Suspicious Activity Reports Look Like

What matters in the fight against human trafficking finance is not the sheer number of suspicious activity reports, but their quality. A well-founded SAR – built on robust KYC processes, intelligent transaction monitoring, and clearly defined risk indicators – provides law enforcement with far more than a report that merely flags a single unusual transaction.

Only when financial intermediaries are able to identify overarching patterns – such as recurring small payments, unusual account relationships, or conspicuous cash withdrawals combined with specific customer profiles – does the kind of financial intelligence emerge that enables criminal structures to be dismantled, rather than simply blocking individual transfers.

Technology as a Lever: From Compliance to Impact

Without capable KYC processes, risk-based indicators, and intelligently configured monitoring systems, even massive illicit financial flows can slip through the cracks. This is not a failure of individual institutions – it is a systemic problem that demands technological solutions.

As an ETH spin-off, Eurospider Information Technology AG develops a RegTech SaaS solution that helps financial intermediaries detect suspicious patterns earlier, digitalise AML workflows, and generate higher-quality suspicious activity reports – including for predicate offences that, despite their severity, remain significantly underreported.

Human trafficking is a crime that depends on invisibility. The role of the financial sector is to break that invisibility – with the right tools, the right knowledge, and a commitment to real-world impact.