In its 2026 Global Financial Crime Report, Nasdaq Verafin found that since 2023 illicit financial activity has surged by $1.3 trillion.
Overall, global financial crime has reached an estimated $4.4 trillion, which Nasdaq Verafin called an epidemic. Over the past two years, it has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.2 percent. This growth in the scope, scale, and evolution of financial crime fundamentally threatens the integrity of the financial system, powering insidious and destabilizing crimes such as human trafficking and terrorism.
The report found that there was significant growth across every measured typology, with illicit flows reaching:
- $1.1 trillion in drug trafficking activity, with annualized growth of 17.1 percent;
- $528.5 billion in human trafficking, with annualized growth of 23.5 percent; and
- $16.2 billion in terrorist financing, with annualized growth of 18.8 percent.
Further, it said that fraud scams and bank fraud schemes led to $579.4 billion in losses globally. Losses from fraud scams are growing more than twice the rate of bank fraud, reaching $62 billion and growing at a compound annual growth rate of 19.3 percent over the last two years.
The rise in scam losses is being driven by the widespread use of AI by criminal networks, who leverage advances in technology to exploit vulnerabilities in the financial system. The speed at which this new threat has saturated the market is alarming. Some 90 percent of the financial crime professionals surveyed in this report noted an increase in AI-driven attacks at their institution over the past two years.
“We are currently in the midst of a full-blown financial crime crisis, powered by criminal networks that are leveraging AI to super-charge scam playbooks and operating with the scale and coordination of multinational corporations,” Stephanie Champion, executive vice president and head of Nasdaq Verafin, said. “While AI has emerged as a key tool for criminals, the industry recognizes the potential of the technology to become its most valuable asset in the fight against financial crime. Cutting-edge technology, combined with improved public-private and private-private collaboration creates a network effect, magnifying the reach of our collective efforts and helping remove criminals from the financial system for good.”
The report stated that the scale and complexity of the crisis require collective action across every sector impacted by the financial crime ecosystem. To advance collaborative efforts in the fight against financial crime, Nasdaq Verafin pledged to support the efforts of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to combat financial crime and fraud by mobilizing collective action within the private sector.
Nasdaq Verafin will host a series of meetings with private sector leaders at the center of the fight against financial crime, beginning with a special in-person summit on October 20th at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.
The 2026 Global Financial Crime Report was produced by Nasdaq Verafin in collaboration with Celent and Oliver Wyman. It combines proprietary data modeling, a survey of more than 500 financial crime professionals, and in-depth interviews with senior executives.