Publication Summary

The illegal wildlife trade, valued at approximately US$20 billion annually, is one of the world’s most profitable criminal markets and a growing risk for financial institutions. Impacting over 40,900 protected species and operating across every region - not only biodiverse areas - the trade involves extensive global networks. Between 2015 and 2021, authorities recorded more than 140,000 seizures spanning roughly 4,000 species, with true volumes likely far higher.

Financial institutions are exposed to this crime through a wide range of transactions and markets, with no single species dominating confiscations. While this creates significant regulatory, financial, and reputational risk, it also presents a critical opportunity: by identifying and disrupting the illicit financial flows that enable wildlife trafficking, institutions can help dismantle criminal networks and strengthen their own defences.

Our report, Dissecting the Environmental-Financial Crime Nexus: A Spotlight on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, examines this issue through a financial crime lens, outlining the scale, complexity, and risk implications of the illegal wildlife trade for the global financial sector.

Key Findings

• The financial sector may be highly exposed to the illegal wildlife trade, with 81% of financial professionals surveyed respondents indicating that their organisation operates in at least one high-risk business area for the crime – generally relating to the transit of goods.
• Although those surveyed displayed an awareness of the specific actions that could be taken to address their exposure to the illegal wildlife trade, concrete risk mitigation action is still lagging behind, with 40% of respondents who indicated exposure to a high-risk sector not screening for these risks.
• Whilst financial institutions tend to demonstrate broad general knowledge of the illegal wildlife trade, this may be limited to a few high-profile areas, such as the ivory trade, and lack precise insight into many other key risk typologies, red flags, products and species.
• Although only 8% of respondents stated that the illegal wildlife trade is not a major concern to their organisation, nearly 50% of respondents from financial institutions with a self-reported high awareness of environmental crime also reported having no policy on the illegal wildlife trade in place.
• This leaves the financial sector vulnerable to both the illegal wildlife trade and the myriad other financial crimes which frequently converge with it, including fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, corruption and bribery, organised crime and drugs trafficking.