Interactive tool
What does manual alert investigation cost you a year?
Put in your own volumes and your own salary figures. The tool does the arithmetic and shows every step of it. There are no industry averages in here, no hidden divisors, and no claim about what a different way of working would save you.
Your figures
Every field below is an assumption. None of them is filled in from a benchmark — the starting values are round illustrative numbers, chosen to make the arithmetic readable, and you should replace all of them.
The figures below use the illustrative starting values
Nothing here reflects your institution yet. Replace the values on the left and submit the form — the result will be computed on the server and appear here with the working shown.
Annual cost of investigating alerts
₦80,000,000
12,000 hours at ₦6,666.67 per analyst hour.
Of which, closed with no suspicion
₦68,000,000
10,200 hours spent on the 85.0% of alerts that close as false positives.
Analyst-hours the volume consumes
12,000
Equivalent to 6.7 full-time analysts at 1,800 productive hours each.
Share of your team's available hours
83%
2,400 hours of the stated capacity remain for work other than alert investigation.
Where the time goes
The split follows directly from the false-positive rate you entered — it is that percentage applied to the total investigation hours, nothing more.
- Alerts closed with no suspicion10,200 hours · ₦68,000,000 · 20,400 alerts
- Alerts requiring substantive review1,800 hours · ₦12,000,000 · 3,600 alerts
Demand against capacity
Both bars are on the same scale. The upper bar is the hours the alert volume needs; the lower is the hours the headcount you entered has.
- Hours required12,000 hours — 24,000 alerts a year at 30 minutes each.
- Hours available14,400 hours — 8 analysts at 1,800 hours each.
| Step | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Alerts a year | 2,000 per month × 12 | 24,000 |
| Investigation hours | 24,000 × 30 min ÷ 60 | 12,000 |
| Cost per analyst hour | ₦12,000,000 ÷ 1,800 hours | ₦6,666.67 |
| Annual investigation cost | 12,000 hours × ₦6,666.67 | ₦80,000,000 |
| False-positive hours | 12,000 × 85.0% | 10,200 |
| False-positive cost | 10,200 hours × ₦6,666.67 | ₦68,000,000 |
| Available analyst hours | 8 analysts × 1,800 hours | 14,400 |
| Utilisation | 12,000 ÷ 14,400 | 83% |
| Total analyst payroll | 8 × ₦12,000,000 | ₦96,000,000 |
How this works
- Nothing is assumed for youSix inputs, all visible, all editable. The one calculators usually hide — productive hours per analyst per year — is on the form because it is the divisor that sets every currency figure here.
- The server does the arithmeticSubmitting the form navigates to this same address with your figures in the query string. The page recomputes from them, so the result works with JavaScript switched off.
- The working is shownEvery row of the table is one operation on named inputs. If a step is not in that table, it did not happen — there is nowhere in this page for an unstated multiplier to hide.
Two things the result deliberately does not tell you. It does not say whether your false-positive rate is high, because that judgement depends on your rule set, your customer base and your risk appetite, and a vendor asserting a target rate without seeing any of those is guessing. And it does not compare your figures to an industry average, because we do not have one we could source.
Where the time actually goes
- Transaction monitoringRule tuning against retained evaluation evidence, so a threshold change can be simulated before it reaches a queue.
- Investigation and caseworkWhere the minutes-per-investigation figure is won or lost: evidence gathered into one place rather than assembled per alert.
- Screening and watchlistsMatch adjudication and suppression, which is usually the largest single source of repeat false positives.
Start the conversation
Bring your numbers to a tuning conversation
The useful next step is not a demo — it is looking at your actual rule set and alert mix with someone who tunes them for a living. Send us the URL this page produced and we will start from your figures.