Autonomous AI agents have the potential to increase the scale and sophistication of fraud.

LexisNexis^® Risk Solutions has extended its powerful risk intelligence solutions to help organisations understand and assess a new class of digital actor: AI agents operating on behalf of people and businesses.

For decades, LexisNexis Risk Solutions has helped organisations make risk decisions by connecting identity, device, behavioural, network and transaction intelligence at global scale. As AI agents become another participant in digital interactions, the company is extending that same connected intelligence approach to agentic activity.

Know Your Agent (KYA) intelligence adds a new layer of agentic insights to LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ digital identity and fraud prevention platform. It helps organisations recognise when AI agents are interacting with their digital services and can bring those interactions directly into established risk assessment and decisioning workflows, rather than treating them as an isolated risk problem. Many LexisNexis Risk Solutions customers are already using KYA intelligence in their current risk management decision making.

Analysis of global digital transactions by LexisNexis Risk Solutions shows agentic traffic grew over 750% in the first half of 2026 alone. Rapid growth is expected to continue as more people and organisations adopt agents to undertake everyday tasks such as online shopping.

Because most personal agents today do not self-declare as agents, organisations face an immediate challenge: distinguishing agentic activity from other digital traffic. But this is only the first step. Agent detection alone cannot answer key questions organisations ultimately need to resolve: Who or what is the agent acting for? Has that activity been authorised? Is its behaviour consistent with that authority? And does the wider context of the interaction indicate that it is legitimate?

That context may also change during a digital journey as control passes between a person and an AI agent, making continuous visibility into the interaction increasingly important. This is where the scale and connectivity of the Risk Intelligence Network becomes essential.

AI-agent activity does not need to be evaluated as an isolated interaction. It can be understood in the context of the identities, devices, networks, behavioural patterns and relationships surrounding digital activity, helping to provide richer context for risk decisions. This connected intelligence approach incorporates agent detection into risk decisions in real time, while aiding in creating a foundation for increasingly sophisticated agent identity and authorizsation capabilities as agents, standards and use cases evolve.

Autonomous AI agents have the potential to increase the scale and sophistication of fraud, including authorised push payment fraud and account takeover attacks. Malicious agents can learn dynamically from successes and failures, enabling subsequent attacks to become more tailored and prolific.

For organisations, the decision is not whether an agent is universally trusted but whether a specific agent, acting in a specific context, should be permitted to perform a specific action. Legitimate agents will increasingly participate in digital customer journeys, but the appropriate response will depend on what the agent is attempting to do, the context of the interaction, and the organisation’s own risk policies. KYA intelligence helps organisations bring agentic activity into existing decisioning workflows so they can allow, authenticate, review or reject interactions as appropriate.

“Agentic commerce is moving quickly from experimentation into the mainstream,” said Grayson Clarke, chief commercial officer at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “Agentic transactions globally more than doubled again in the last quarter, driven primarily by personal agents. Some businesses are enabling agents to transact on consumers’ behalf, while others are restricting their activities, and many are still determining the right approach. We have already seen firsthand how a global financial institution used our detection capabilities to help identify agentic activity and prevent it from executing sensitive transactions.”

LexisNexis Risk Solutions analysed more than 116 billion digital transactions globally in 2025 through its LexisNexis^® Digital Identity Network^®, giving it a uniquely broad view of how human, automated and increasingly agentic interactions are evolving. The network detected 4.9 billion automated bot attacks during the year, a 59% increase year over year. That scale reflects the role LexisNexis Risk Solutions already plays in helping many of the world’s largest financial institutions, merchants and digital businesses assess risk across digital interactions.

Mike Woodberry, senior vice president of product and analytics at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, added, “Managing risk in the agentic economy will require more than agent detection alone. The real challenge is establishing context: what is acting, who or what it represents, whether it is authorised and what it is attempting to do. Our vision for KYA is to extend established risk intelligence into the agentic economy, helping give organisations the flexibility to apply the appropriate response to each interaction rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all risk assessment.”

Woodberry continued, “Organisations should not have to build a new risk strategy every time digital interactions evolve. Adding a new layer of agentic insights to our established identity and fraud prevention platform helps customers build on the capabilities they already rely on while preparing for the next generation of digital interactions.”

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 The report offers insight into the worldwide financial cost of compliance, with financial institutions bearing a total cost of U.S.$206.1 billion. This cost is comparable to more than 12% of global research and development (R&D) expenditure^[1] and equates to $3.33 per month for each working-age individual on Earth^[2].

Key findings from the LexisNexis Risk Solutions True Cost of Financial Crime Compliance Report – 2023 include:

Artificial intelligence (AI) leaves its mark

While certain industries are still determining the ways in which AI and machine learning (ML) will bring about an influence, 71% of professionals in financial crime compliance indicate that their organisations are already enhancing data utilisation through advanced analytics. Additionally, 72% confirm that they employ analytics and AI to enhance their compliance procedures. 

However, similar to historic changes in ways of working, problems with data quality, data silos, outdated legacy systems and a lack of collaboration internally can create avoidable compliance activity and expenditure.  

EMEA remains a high-cost center for financial crime compliance

The study reveals that EMEA financial institutions and their customers continue to incur a more substantial expense for financial crime compliance compared to other regions. The overall cost of financial crime compliance in EMEA surpasses that of the U.S./Canada by 39.8%. This difference is partly indicative of the escalating intricacy of compliance requirements.

Globally, 78% of organisations and specifically 80% in EMEA indicate that the intricate network of regulations and sanctions acts as a constraint on their business operations. In contrast, APAC and LATAM are comparatively more cost-effective regions, despite significant compliance expenditure. The financial compliance expenses in APAC amount to 74.5% of those in the U.S./Canada, while LATAM’s costs are 24.7% in comparison.

Change to address future challenges

CEOs, vice presidents and directors in financial institutions globally are not complacent. Many new initiatives add to the ongoing complexity they face in meeting financial crime compliance requirements. However, 85% of financial institutions place enhancing customer experience at the top of their priority list. This reaffirms a commitment towards fostering trust and delivering satisfaction, even in the face of proliferating financial threats. A substantial emphasis of these efforts revolves around optimising the efficiency and efficacy of financial crime compliance concerning payments. Globally, 74% of institutions emphasise that this is a critical or high-priority endeavor.

“The financial impact of crime resonates through businesses’ financial statements and consumers’ wallets,” said Grayson Clarke, senior vice-president for LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “In the pursuit of the common good, legislators and regulators collaborate tirelessly with financial institutions to establish necessary mandates. However, these endeavors aren’t without costs. Our report underscores that financial institutions are making significant investments to stay compliant with financial crime regulations. Effective collaboration within these institutions is pivotal for enhancing the customer experience while managing these costs. Leveraging emerging technologies alongside existing solutions can empower institutions to achieve their objectives and deliver optimal customer outcomes.”

Download the Report.

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[1] https://uis.unesco.org/apps/visualisations/research-and-development-spending/
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.1564.TO

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