What are Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs)? (2024)

Detecting signs of money laundering requires the gathering, analysis and reporting of financial data. To complete these tasks, both the public and private sectors rely on financial intelligence units (FIUs).

An FIU is an investigative unit established by individual countries to centralize the gathering of suspicious activity reports related to criminal financial activity, including money laundering and terrorism. An FIU also shares the results of its analysis with relevant government agencies.

In the public sector, FIUs started appearing in the early 1990s.

In its 2004 report, Financial Intelligence Units: An Overview, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four types of FIUs: administrative, law enforcement, judicial or prosecutorial, or hybrid.

The Egmont Group of FIUs exists to provide government FIUs with a platform to improve the public sector’s ability to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The group supports 164 FIUs from around the globe and also uses the IMF’s model to classify the types of FIUs.

Role of FIUs

According to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body, interpretive note to recommendation 29 notes that countries should create a financial intelligence unit to function as the central gathering point to receive and analyze suspicious transaction reports. Additionally, the FIU should gather “other information relevant to money laundering, associated predicate offenses and terrorist financing, and for the dissemination of the results of that analysis.”

Additionally, some see a role for FIUs in fighting tax-related crimes. FIUs can also play a role in the investigation and prosecution of other forms of financial crime, including bribery and corruption, as in this case of several high-profile investigations in Mexico, for example.

The FIU acronym also appears in the private sector. Most banks name their anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing departments using the term. A bank’s FIU includes teams of investigators tasked with uncovering and investigating customer transactions associated with money laundering or terrorist financing.