With online sexual exploitation of children rising, early detection and prevention of suspicious activities is essential. Monitoring and tracking suspicious financial behaviour might provide insight into sources of child exploitation, so banks and financial institutions (“FIs”) have an opportunity to form compliance programmes, which address this directly. In late 2020, FTI Consulting’s investigations and financial crime compliance experts were engaged by a top-tier law firm on behalf of ICMEC to develop a toolkit on how banks and FIs might structure their compliance programmes to detect and prevent suspicious activities.
The toolkit and high-level typology-driven data analytics framework that was developed enables banks and FIs to identify and report transactional activity indicative of child exploitation.
With over 70 hours dedicated to the pro bono project, FTI Consulting helped develop risk management guidance and educational tools for law firms, FIs and ICMEC to monitor suspicious financial activity that might lead to child exploitation.
Freshfields, in partnership with FTI Consulting and ICMEC, received “Highly Commended” recognition in the Responsible Business category at the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Awards Asia-Pacific 2026, for its contribution to the Child Protection Toolkit.
Each organization brought distinct expertise to the collaboration. Through a teach-in, FTI Consulting contributed deep knowledge of payment flows and transaction monitoring, including how these vary across retail banks and other payment intermediaries, as well as insight into potential areas of weakness for financial institutions in identifying and reporting issues and engaging with regulators and law enforcement. Freshfields brought legal expertise across AML frameworks and multi-jurisdictional compliance obligations, while ICMEC provided the child protection intelligence and policy context underpinning the toolkit's typologies.
Our team assisted in developing a process to better understand how select FIs identify transactions that are potentially related to the online sexual exploitation of children.
Our team participated in outreach to FIs to understand their risk management practices around monitoring child exploitation in their respective institutions.
FTI Consulting experts helped develop materials for anti-money laundering (“AML”), investigations and AML data analytics teams.
The FTI Consulting team completed Phase II of the engagement, where they played a key role in launching the Child Protection Toolkit for Financial Institutions, designed to combat misuse of the financial system for online child sexual exploitation.
“It has been a privilege for us to work with ICMEC and FTI Consulting on such an important project. Financial institutions find themselves at the frontline of efforts to disrupt child exploitation, and the Toolkit aims to be an important weapon for good — bringing together organisations, financial institutions and law enforcers so that their efforts can be further aligned and focused, and outcomes magnified.”
In our effort to counter the scourge of commercial child sexual exploitation, ICMEC benefited greatly from the knowledge and expertise of the FTI Consulting team. In particular, the team’s experienced approach to risk and compliance added substantive content and nuance to the development of the Child Protection 101 – A Toolkit for the Financial Industry. We could not have expected more from a partner and are truly grateful.
See why FTI Consulting is the leading global expert firm for organisations facing crisis and transformation.
We leverage our collective expertise and unique skill sets to support our communities and respond to the world’s most pressing social and environmental issues.
At FTI Consulting, we pride ourselves on making a positive impact in our communities through volunteering, pro bono and charitable giving initiatives.
