The Basel AML Index is an independent global ranking that measures countries’ vulnerability to money laundering and terrorist financing. Unlike crime statistics, the Index focuses on structural weaknesses that increase exposure to financial crime. The Basel Institute on Governance released the 2025 Basel AML Index, naming Finland as the lowest-risk country and Myanmar as the highest-risk jurisdiction worldwide.
Indices like the Basel AML Index are often used as one input for understanding jurisdiction-level risk. Organizations might review these benchmarks alongside other sources of information and internal frameworks to add context to how exposure may present across customers, counterparties, and activities.
The Basel AML Index is a composite risk ranking developed by the Basel Institute on Governance. It assesses countries’ exposure to money laundering and terrorist financing using indicators from 17 public sources, including the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Transparency International.
Each jurisdiction receives a score between 0 (lowest risk) and 10 (highest risk). The 2025 Public Edition covers 177 jurisdictions, focusing on those with reliable data and a current FATF evaluation. Paid editions offer more granular, regularly updated data for banks and regulated entities conducting risk assessments.
The Index aggregates risk indicators across five categories:
Scores are normalized on a 0–10 scale and weighted, with the quality of AML/CFT/CPF frameworks carrying most weight in the index, followed by corruption and fraud, and financial transparency and standard.
The Index consolidates multiple public indicators into a single score. In practice however teams might review a jurisdiction score together with other information, for example, ownership structures, sanctions exposure, adverse media, or sectorspecific considerations to deepen the risk assessment method.
For financial institutions, the Basel AML Index can provide a data-driven benchmark to support risk-based AML programs, offering a useful reference point for identifying structural factors associated with higher or lower jurisdictional risk — one dimension that may be useful when interpreting cross-border exposure. By categorizing jurisdictions as low-, medium-, or high-risk, compliance teams may be able to identify structural weaknesses, such as poor beneficial ownership transparency or weak enforcement, and provide context for due diligence considerations.
The global average risk score decreased marginally compared with the 2024 Public Edition, from 5.30 to 5.28 (on a 0–10 scale).
Compared with the 2024 Public Edition, 54% (88 jurisdictions) improved their scores, 43% (71) worsened and 3% (5) were unchanged.
A risk-based approach to AML remains important as some jurisdictions appear to struggle to apply effective, proportionate controls. This challenge may be compounded by the rising risks associated with virtual assets, where transparency and enforcement frameworks remain inconsistent and patchy across markets.
Global AML/CFT standards appear to be placing increased emphasis on proportionality, encouraging regulators and institutions to adopt simplified measures in lower-risk situations while maintaining robust controls where risks are higher. This shift highlights why organizations may be exploring ways to combine external benchmarks with additional data sources and contextual intelligence, with the aim of supporting proportionate decisionmaking across onboarding, monitoring, and periodic review.
The Basel AML Index continues to be an important benchmark for understanding global AML/CFT vulnerabilities. While the 2025 edition shows marginal improvement on the previous year, it highlights continued focus on risk-based compliance approaches and emerging areas of risk.
Moody’s provides data, analytics, and workflow capabilities that organizations may use to add context to add context to AML and anti-financial crime processes. This may include incorporating external benchmarks, such as jurisdiction risk indices, alongside entity level and network information, screening and monitoring inputs, and configurable risk methodologies used in customer due diligence and ongoing review.
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