Financial crime changes fast, and so do the data available to measure it. Compliance teams, supervisors and other public authorities need tools that evolve just as quickly when they assess money laundering and related financial crime risks at the jurisdiction level.

The Basel AML Index’s 15th annual update, to be released in early December, is designed to meet that need. Four changes to its methodology replace data sources that are no longer updated, plus add new perspectives on bribery, judicial independence, public financial management, and financial, tax and customs transparency.

Subscribers will also gain new features built around their day-to-day work, including coverage of 247 jurisdictions, faster sanctions updates and easier tracking of changes in the Basel AML Index scores over time.

Who uses the Basel AML Index and why

The Basel AML Index is an independent tool for assessing the risk of money laundering and related financial crimes in jurisdictions around the world.

Published annually since 2012 by the Basel Institute on Governance, it combines data from respected public sources on the regulatory, legal, political and financial factors that make a jurisdiction more or less vulnerable to financial crime.

The methodology currently comprises 17 indicators across five domains: Quality of AML/CFT/CPF framework; Corruption and fraud risks; Financial transparency and standards; Public transparency and accountability; and Political and legal risks.

Financial institutions use the subscription-based Basel AML Index Expert Edition and Expert Edition Plus tools to assess country risks, benchmark internal risk models and identify higher- and lower-risk jurisdictions so they can prioritise resources.

Supervisors, regulators and policymakers can access the Expert Editions for free. They use them to benchmark progress over time and against other jurisdictions, prepare for Financial Action Task Force evaluations and strengthen their supervisory approaches.

Thank you to our expert reviewers

Each year, we review the Basel AML Index methodology with external experts to make sure it remains accurate, transparent and relevant to evolving financial crime risks. This year’s meetings on 21 and 22 September 2026 brought together more than 40 experts from the public and private sectors, including regulators, supervisors, financial intelligence units, international organisations and financial institutions.

We are very grateful to all participants for their time and for the meaningful and valuable contributions they made to the review. Their input shaped this year’s decisions in concrete ways: one of the changes described below was proposed by participants during the discussion.

Participation in the review meeting does not indicate agreement with the decisions or a consensus among participants. Responsibility for the final decisions on the methodology rests with the Basel Institute on Governance.

Four changes to the methodology

Table 1 summarises the changes. Weightings of all five domains stay the same.

Table 1: Summary of methodological changes in the 2026 Basel AML Index. Source: Basel Institute on Governance.

Change 1: Bribery – incorporating data on firms’ direct experience

The TRACE Bribery Risk Matrix is no longer updated. We initially proposed removing it and doubling the weight of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. During the meeting, experts suggested the World Bank Enterprise Surveys as an alternative. We reviewed and accepted this suggestion.

Based on the direct experience of private-sector firms, the Enterprise Surveys complement the perception-based Corruption Perceptions Index. Two of their indicators will be combined into a single score with a weight of 5 percent:

• Bribery incidence is the percentage of firms that experienced at least one request for a bribe payment.
• Bribery depth is the percentage of public transactions in which a gift or informal payment was requested.

This will be included in the Corruption and Fraud Risks domain.

Change 2: Judicial independence – V-Dem replaces discontinued data

The World Economic Forum no longer regularly updates its Judicial Independence indicator. We will replace it with five indicators from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, produced by a global research initiative based at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

The indicators are: high court independence; lower court independence; compliance with high court decisions; compliance with the judiciary; and government attacks on the judiciary.

The five indicators will be combined into a single score from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating higher risk. The new indicator keeps the existing weight of 3.33 percent, within the Political and Legal Risks domain.

Change 3: Public financial management: – PEFA data added

Data from Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessments will become the fourth indicator in the Public Transparency and Accountability domain. PEFA adds an assessment of public financial management systems, which the existing three indicators in this domain do not cover comprehensively.

PEFA assesses 31 performance indicators across seven areas, from budget reliability and transparency of public finances to external scrutiny and audit. Its methodology covers both compliance and effectiveness.

We will calculate a single PEFA score for each country, using country-level assessments only. The domain’s 5 percent weight will be shared equally between its four indicators, at 1.25 percent each.

Change 4: A new Financial, Tax & Customs Transparency indicator

In the Financial Transparency and Standards domain, the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index will be replaced by a new Financial, Tax & Customs Transparency indicator developed by the Basel AML Index team. It keeps the existing weight of 15 percent.

The new indicator reduces duplication with data from the Financial Action Task Force, which the Index already uses directly. It also aims to improve consistency with the Index’s other indicators and extends coverage to 173 jurisdictions. It has two components:

• Financial, tax and customs transparency. This uses 15 selected sub-indicators from the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes and the World Bank Business Ready framework. They cover tax information exchange, beneficial ownership, customs and border management, interoperability of public information systems, insolvency frameworks, commercial lending and safeguards for electronic payments.
• Exposure through cross-border financial services. This uses International Monetary Fund (IMF) Balance of Payments data on financial services exports. It measures both materiality (a jurisdiction’s share of global financial services exports) and intensity (the value of those exports relative to the size of its economy).

Statistical testing shows that the new indicator is positively associated with the other components of the Basel AML Index, while remaining sufficiently distinct from them.

New features for Expert Edition subscribers

The following features are also being introduced to enhance the user experience. The Expert Edition of the Basel AML Index will introduce:

• Wider coverage. The Expert Edition and Expert Edition Plus subscriptions will cover 247 jurisdictions, including additional dependencies and other areas covered by the ISO 3166-1 standard, which many international financial and compliance systems use. Where jurisdiction-specific data are unavailable, the score of the relevant sovereign state or administering jurisdiction will be used as a proxy. All proxy scores will be clearly identified in the dataset.
• Faster sanctions updates. Sanctions lists will be updated within five calendar days of the relevant sanctions decisions, without waiting for the next quarterly data update.
• Easier tracking of changes. Three new fields – Previous Score, Change in Overall Score and Change in Risk Level – show changes over time without the need to compare separate editions. This supports regular reviews of geographical risk assessments and internal jurisdiction risk classifications.
• Version control. New Version Number and Last Updated On fields allow users to document which version of the Basel AML Index they applied in their risk assessments. This supports internal record-keeping and supervisory audits.
• Metadata sheet. A new dedicated sheet will describe every column in the dataset. This provides a common reference for interpreting the data and makes it easier to integrate them into internal risk assessment and compliance systems.

A new streamlined subscription process, with clearer access rules for free and paid access to Basel AML Index data, is also in the works.

What to expect in December

The changes will apply from the 2026 edition of the Basel AML Index, to be published in early December 2026. As several indicators are changing, some jurisdictions’ scores and risk levels may shift as a result of the new methodology rather than a change in underlying risk.

We recommend that users take this into account when updating their geographical risk assessments.

Learn more

• Explore the Basel AML Index and its current methodology.
• Find out about Expert Edition and Expert Edition Plus subscriptions.
• Register for the 2026 Basel AML Index launch event.
• Contact the Basel AML Index team at index@baselgovernance.org.