In the wake of a spate of high-profile terror attacks in recent years, a top compliance executive from Barclays has explained how his organization helps authorities prevent future incidents.

An in-house Barclays warning system helped UK authorities identify terror networks and prevent attacks, a top compliance executive from the bank reportedly said this week. The comments, while made in the UK, are likely to capture interest in countries including the US.

The UK-based bank developed the system, utilizing red-flag indicators it finds after a terrorist incident and gathering them to create monitoring tools, Frederick Reynolds, head of financial crime at Barclays, told a conference earlier this week. The article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal. 

The system captures “a vast amount” of bank tansactions across the UK and Europe, while a unit uses analytical tools to spot links across risk factors and identify potential future terrorist activity, Reynolds said.

“We did, in fact, interdict people in the terrorist cycle,” Reynolds said, declining to specify the attacks involved other than to say they were in the planning stages. He spoke on a counter-terrorism panel at the ACAMS moneylaundering.com International AML and Financial Crime Conference. 

Barclays also responds fast in the event of a terror attack, Reynolds explained, by assembling a team within around an hour of an incident tasked with combing through financial and public data to develop a package for authorities. Law enforcement often contacts the bank in the immediate aftermath of an attack, he added.