Author

Ronan Burke

Biography

Writing

Speaking

Co-founder and CEO

Inscribe AI

Expertise

AI Risk Agents

Fraud Detection

Risk Management

Financial Services

Banking

Lending

Fintechs

Document Fraud Detection

AI Fraud Reasoning

Generative AI and Financial Crime

Agentic AI for Risk Teams

Biography

Ronan Burke is the co-founder and CEO of Inscribe, the agentic document fraud detection platform trusted by leading U.S. banks, credit unions, and fintechs. He has spent nearly a decade at the front lines of financial document fraud — first building the detectors, and now the reasoning systems designed to replace them.

His focus is the intersection of generative AI and financial crime. Generative AI has changed the economics of fraud: a convincing pay stub takes seconds to produce, editable bank statement templates sell for under $10, and the volume of fraudulent documents reaching financial institutions has grown to roughly one in sixteen. Ronan's view is that the fraud industry moved first, and most defenses haven't caught up. Rules-based systems and static classifiers were built for a world where fraud was infrequent. They're poorly matched to attacks that are constant, cheap, and fast-iterating.

The answer he keeps coming back to is fraud reasoning: AI that plans, investigates, and explains its conclusions rather than running a fixed checklist. Inscribe's AI Agents reflect that philosophy: they cross-reference metadata, validate employers, flag forensic anomalies, and produce audit-ready explanations, reducing document review from 30 minutes to under 90 seconds while catching fraud that detection alone misses.

Ronan writes for Forbes and ACFE on document fraud, deepfakes, and responsible AI in financial services, and hosts Inscribe's podcast Good Question, where he interviews fraud and risk leaders across banking, lending, and fintech. He has spoken at Lend360, Finovate Fall, and the ACU Business Lending Roundtable, and has been featured in TechCrunch, Fast Company, VentureBeat, and The Irish Times. He is a Forbes Technology Council Member and a 2020 Forbes "30 Under 30 Europe" honoree. He studied Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin and later completed Y Combinator.

“We're entering an era where it's no longer a question of whether a document looks real — but whether it can prove it's real.”

FAQ

What is Ronan Burke's area of expertise?

Ronan Burke specializes in document fraud detection, generative AI, and agentic systems for financial crime prevention. He has spent nearly a decade studying how fraud tactics evolve — particularly how generative AI has changed the volume, velocity, and sophistication of document fraud — and what detection and reasoning systems need to do to keep pace.

What is document fraud?

Document fraud is the submission of forged, fabricated, or altered documents — such as pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, or utility bills — to deceive financial institutions during onboarding, lending, or underwriting. Generative AI has made document fraud significantly easier to commit: convincing fakes can now be produced in seconds, and editable templates are widely available for under $10. Roughly one in sixteen documents processed across Inscribe's network in 2025 showed signs of manipulation, fabrication, or misrepresentation.

How is generative AI changing document fraud?

Generative AI has changed the economics of fraud. Creating a convincing fake document once required technical skill and significant effort. Today, AI tools can produce realistic pay stubs, bank statements, and utility bills in seconds — and template marketplaces make editable fraudulent documents available to anyone. The result is that fraud is no longer rare or isolated. It is routine, scalable, and fast-iterating, which means static, rules-based detection systems — built for a world where fraud was infrequent — are no longer sufficient.

What is fraud reasoning?

Fraud reasoning is an approach to fraud detection that uses AI agents to investigate documents the way a skilled analyst would — planning a sequence of checks, adapting based on what the evidence shows, cross-referencing metadata and content signals, and producing an explanation of its conclusions. This is distinct from traditional detection, which runs a fixed set of rules or classifiers and outputs a score. Fraud reasoning allows AI systems to catch novel fraud types, handle complex cases, and provide the audit-ready explanations that risk and compliance teams require.

What podcasts and publications has Ronan Burke appeared in?

Ronan Burke hosts Good Question, Inscribe's podcast on fraud, AI, and financial risk. He has been interviewed on Banking on Fraudology, Fraud Forward, Dilly Labs, and Disruptive CEO Nation. His writing has appeared in Forbes, ACFE Fraud Magazine, and The Credit Union Connection. He has also spoken at Lend360, Finovate Fall, and the ACU Business Lending Roundtable.