Best Bank Statement Analysis Tools For Fraud Investigators in 2024

January 3, 2024

As a seasoned fraud investigator, you understand that analyzing bank statements is like unearthing a hidden trove of insights, revealing the path of dubious funds, transaction patterns, and the players involved.

However, manually capturing and analyzing data is akin to a Herculean task – painstakingly poring over heaps of data from various sources, risking errors and oversights.

You may be tempted to rely on free tools, but they often come with a hefty hidden price tag – a compromise on accuracy and security. They’re akin to getting directions from a stranger – you might get where you need to go, or you might end up lost.

Then, there’s the option of hiring bookkeepers. But let’s face it, they’re not always the speediest or most cost-effective alternative.

That’s why advanced bank statement analysis tools are a godsend. These tools don’t just take the grunt work out of the process; they also provide actionable insights, much like a trusty sidekick.

In this blog post, we’ve donned our tour guide hats to walk you through the top five bank statement analysis tools of 2024. We’ve analyzed the ins and outs of each tool to help you zero in on the one that suits your needs to a T. Let’s get started!

What to Look for in a Bank Statement Analysis Tool

But before we jump into the list of the best free bank statement analysis tools, let’s discuss what makes a tool effective and efficient for financial fraud investigations.

Accuracy of Data Capture

Bank statement analysis tools must capture the details from bank statements, whether PDF or paper-based, with 100% accuracy and organize the information systematically. But most OCR software solutions available in the market fail to do so.

2. Speed of Information Extraction

A top-notch financial investigation software should be able to transform months of tedious data handling into weeks of efficient work. Ideally, this powerful solution should be capable of processing over a hundred transactions in mere seconds.

Also read: 3 Reasons To Switch From Manual To Automated Financial Data Analysis For Fraud Investigation

3. Audit Trail

The tool should meticulously track and record every action and transaction, keeping a chronological log that details what was done, when it was done, and by whom. An audit trail provides an invaluable layer of transparency and accountability, facilitating easy review and verification processes.

4. Automated Data Visualization for Effective Analysis

Creating financial models manually in Excel is a highly cumbersome process. The tool should be capable of automating the data visualizations, making it quicker and easier for investigators to follow the money. For example, automated ‘flow of funds’ visualization allows you to trace assets with ease in money laundering cases.

5. Integration

The ideal tool should integrate seamlessly with other financial software, such as Quickbooks, Excel, and Microsoft Power BI. This feature boosts its functionality and ease of use.

6. Financial Institution Support

Different banks have different formats for statements. So, the tool must be able to support different bank statement formats and adapt to new ones in a short time.

7. Security

Security is paramount when dealing with sensitive financial information. On-premise deployment of a bank statement analysis tool through a desktop application prevents the possibility of data breaches.

8. Language Support

Multiple-language support is another feature to consider while selecting financial investigation software as per your needs.

9. Intuitive Interface

This feature ensures quicker onboarding for new users. The software must provide a one-click source verification and make it easy for investigators to compare the source bank statements and captured data with ease.

Top 5 Free & Paid Bank Statement Analysis Tools

Here’s a list of our top 5 picks for bank statement analysis to help fraud investigators detect suspicious activities.

ScanWriter
Docsumo
Klippa
Capturefast
Docparser

Bank Statement Analysis Tool #1: ScanWriter

This powerful bank statement analysis tool by Personable, trusted by Federal and State Government Agencies, saves 90% of the manual hours spent in fraud investigations by financial institutions. The software can easily convert any paper or digital document, including bank statements, into Excel within minutes, customizing categories and organizing data, ensuring 100% accurate data capture at the same time.

Source: ScanWriter

Scanwriter has partnered with Microsoft Power Business Intelligence, which puts fraud investigators in the driver’s seat to detect any suspicious activity. It can automatically prepare “data visualization models,” for instance, ‘flow of funds,’ to show the money movement and capture any fraudulence.

This feature can be better understood with this case study:

A financial fraud case involves reviewing multiple documents and transactions to understand where the money goes and comes from.

In this case, millions of dollars were moved from account to account, which can take an analyst months or even years to complete manually. It was more complicated as each transaction was a couple of hundred dollars, and the analyst would have to manually link the transactions to each account.

The analyst, an industry veteran of 20 years, explains, “I gave up on using the software my agency had in the past. I could not get it to work right, so I ended up entering each transaction one-by-one… it’s a labor of love… and sometimes blood, sweat, and tears…”

However, after using Scanwriter, the analyst was able to review and gather fraud evidence within a couple of weeks.

The analyst created multiple “flow of funds” visualizations using ScanWriter’s Power BI Flow of Funds Model to track all the money movements. She said, “I verified the accuracy, parsed and standardized the business/entity names, and created a Flow of Funds visualization that showed the money going in and out… I could even filter by my targets!”

Using the software, she could also automatically match offsets to individual bank statements, populating key details such as the payee name. The wide range of banks the software supports has also been beneficial for the case.

For further reading, check – How ScanWriter’s Data Visualization Helped In Timely Arrest Of A Murder Suspect?

Key Features

There are many valuable features that make fraud investigators love ScanWriter; listing down the critical ones here:

#1- Automated Data Capturing from Various Documents

With ScanWriter, you no longer need to spend countless hours manually entering data from various sources into an Excel spreadsheet. Its advanced algorithm is designed to capture data automatically from a wide range of documents, including pictures, PDFs, and even handwritten notes.

This tool can distinguish and organize essential pieces of information such as dates, transaction amounts, and payee details, effectively eliminating the possibility of human error and saving you valuable time.

#2- Intelligent Transaction Recognition

ScanWriter goes a step beyond standard Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Besides recognizing text, it can identify and categorize different transactions, importing them into a spreadsheet for analysis, which makes it more than just a tool for digitizing documents.

This functionality allows users to analyze and interpret their financial data more efficiently, aiding them in making informed decisions.

#3- Handling Large Volumes of Data Securely

ScanWriter is built to handle large volumes (~100,000) of bank statements securely. For organizations where data security is paramount, it provides a 100% secure environment for your financial data.

While cloud-based solutions are popular, the added security and control of on-premise software remain unbeatable. Recognizing this need, ScanWriter offers the option of on-premise deployment.

This means that all your sensitive data is stored and processed on your local servers, providing an additional layer of security and control.

#4- Microsoft Power BI Integration

Another key feature of ScanWriter is its advanced data visualization models, like the flow of funds, powered by Microsoft BI. The tool can transform raw financial data into intuitive graphs, charts, and other visual representations.

This feature allows users to trace the flow of money and detect any suspicious activity more easily. These visual aids can be particularly helpful for auditors, accountants, and other financial professionals looking for anomalies or trends in financial data.

Also read: 20 Ways To Detect Fraud Using Dynamic Data Visualization.

#5- Dual-Screen Data Preview Feature

To further ensure accuracy, ScanWriter offers a dual-screen data preview feature. This means you can view the original bank statement and the captured data side by side, in real-time.

This feature helps reduce errors as you can instantly verify the extracted data against the original document, making the data capture process more efficient and accurate.

#6- Tracing International Money Trails

In today’s globalized world, transactions often cross borders and work in different languages and time zones. ScanWriter is equipped to handle this complexity.

It can trace international money trails, accommodating different regulations, languages, and time zones. This makes it an indispensable tool for multinational corporations and individuals involved in international business or investment.

#7- Multilingual Support

ScanWriter understands that financial operations are global and offers support for 21 languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Arabic, and more.

This wide language support ensures that users around the world can effectively use the tool, breaking down language barriers and facilitating global financial analysis.

#9- Supports 15000+ Financial Institutions

ScanWriter currently supports over 15,000 financial institutions, so you can work on different bank statements seamlessly.

In case your fraud analysis involves records from an institution that’s not in ScanWriter’s database, you can easily contact customer support to add a new institution within 24-48 hours.

Cons

Currently doesn’t support real-time transaction monitoring.

Why Should You Consider ScanWriter?

Extracting data from a plethora of bank statements alone can take weeks or even months to extract and prepare the data that is ready for analysis.

After you gather the bank statement records, you need to transfer them into spreadsheets, normalize them, and clean up any errors and duplicates to start the review.

ScanWriter can speed up this entire process with 100% accuracy, working across multiple banks, document formats, and even taking care of different languages and regulations. And, well, ScanWriter does not stop here, it even automates data visualizations, freeing time for investigators to conduct meaningful analysis over losing time in grunt work.

Pricing

The standard price of ScanWriter starts at $5495/license. While this may sound a little pricey, the extensive customer support ensures you are assisted at every step of the way and helps save extensive organizational resources, including human efforts, money spent on errors, and your reputation as a fraud investigator in the long run.

To get a free demo, Contact ScanWriter today.

Review & Rating

“ScanWriter is a Game Changer. And I am on the winning team.”

“ScanWriter allows me to focus on more important tasks by taking care of data preparation & analysis.”

“We have used other software like Bank-Scan but nothing beats ScanWriter.”

“Super easy to convert bank statements into Excel and analyze them.”

– Capterra users.

Source: Capterra

Pro Tip

Leverage the “flow of funds” visualization to quickly scan where the money is coming from and where it is going to detect suspicious activities.

Bank Statement Analysis Tool #2: Docsumo

Docsumo is a bank statement analysis tool designed to simplify and expedite the process of analyzing financial documents. It leverages advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate data extraction, validation, and analysis.

Capable of reading and interpreting data from different formats and sources, Docsumo provides a streamlined and efficient solution for fraud investigators, making it possible to process a high volume of transactions in a short span of time.

Source – Docsumo