Unit21
No-code platform that lets a bank or fintech's risk team build their own fraud and money-laundering detection rules, investigate flagged cases, and file the required regulatory reports.
🔗 Visit Unit21
Description
Catching fraud or money laundering is only half the job at a bank or fintech — once something's flagged, a risk team still has to investigate it, decide what to do, and often file a formal report with a regulator, all within strict compliance timelines. Unit21 is built for that whole operational chain: it lets a risk team write their own detection rules without needing an engineer, then gives them the tools to investigate a flagged case and generate the regulatory filing, in one connected system rather than several disconnected tools. Unit21 combines AI agents for real-time fraud detection and automated investigation with a no-code rule builder, a unified device-risk score, transaction monitoring, payment and sanctions screening, case management, automated regulatory filing (SARs, STRs, CTRs), graph analysis for uncovering hidden relationships between entities, and access to a fraud-data consortium covering 80M+ US adults. It reports representing roughly 5% of all Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed in the US, monitoring 4.5 billion events monthly across 200+ institutional customers.
💬 Our review
The short version: Unit21's real strength is the operational side of fraud and AML work — no-code rule-building plus case management plus automated regulatory filing in one place — which matters most to mid-market fintechs and digital banks that need to move fast on new rules without waiting on engineering, while still meeting strict compliance deadlines.
The claim of representing roughly 5% of all US SARs filed is a genuinely striking scale indicator if accurate — it suggests real, deep usage inside actual compliance operations, not just a detection tool sitting unused after purchase. The no-code rule builder specifically addresses a common operational bottleneck: fraud patterns shift constantly, and a risk team that has to file an engineering ticket every time they want to adjust a detection rule is structurally slower than one that can update rules themselves. The honest positioning versus Sardine: Unit21 leans harder into the no-code investigation and case-management workflow, while Sardine leans harder into the real-time transaction-scoring layer itself — many institutions run both together rather than picking one, since they solve adjacent but distinct parts of the same overall fraud/AML problem. As with any vendor in this space, its adoption and scale figures (4.5B monthly events, 48.3M analyst hours saved) are self-reported and worth a direct methodology question during evaluation.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Pros
No-code rule builder lets risk teams adjust detection logic without engineering
Reports representing ~5% of all US SARs filed, a strong real-usage scale signal
Combines detection, investigation and automated regulatory filing in one platform
Fraud-data consortium covering 80M+ US adults
Cons
Scale and efficiency figures are self-reported, worth a direct methodology question
US-focused regulatory filing features (SARs, STRs, CTRs)
No public pricing, fully custom enterprise sales
❓ Frequently asked questions
- Can our risk team change fraud detection rules ourselves?
- Yes — Unit21's no-code rule builder is designed specifically so a risk or compliance team can create and adjust detection logic without needing an engineer to implement it.
- Does it handle the regulatory filing paperwork too?
- Yes — it automates generating regulatory filings (SARs, STRs, CTRs) as part of its case-management workflow, not just detection.
- How is it different from Sardine?
- Unit21 focuses more on the no-code rule-building, investigation and case-management side of fraud/AML operations, while Sardine focuses more on real-time transaction-level fraud scoring — many institutions use both together.
- Is it worth the money compared to alternatives?
- For a fintech or bank whose risk team needs to move fast on new fraud patterns without waiting on engineering, the no-code rule builder and integrated regulatory filing are worth the investment — ask for a direct methodology explanation behind its headline usage statistics during evaluation.
- Which tool should you pick for your case?
- Need no-code rule-building, case management and automated regulatory filing: Unit21. Need real-time payment-level fraud scoring across many rails: Sardine — many institutions run both.