The FCA recently published its first thematic review on AML in the capital markets industry. It does not make for comforting reading for practitioners. The Money Laundering Regulations first came into force in the UK in 1994, and applied to capital markets firms from the outset, and yet 25 years later the FCA states in this review, “We found that participants were generally at the early stages of their thinking in relation to money-laundering risk.” Obviously, there are cases where capital markets firms take AML seriously and have proper controls in place, but it is clear from the FCA thematic review that this is far from the case in many firms, possibly even the majority.
August 15th, 2019
Central bank sponsored real-time payments are proliferating across the globe and with the recent announcement by the U.S. Federal Reserve, this will soon reach the U.S.
August 12th, 2019
NICE Actimize recently released a new white paper on this topic, titled “The Moment for Implementing Real-Time Inbound Payment Profiling is Now: Are you ready to manage the AML issues?” by Robert Tharle and Adam McLaughlin, available to download here.
August 7th, 2019
This is the first in a series of three blog posts addressing the changing landscape of P2P payments. Follow-up posts will address the growing trend ACH Fraud through third parties and the effects of data breaches on P2P fraud.
August 6th, 2019
Recently, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a bulletin (OCC Bulletin 2019-37) outlining best practices for Fraud Risk Management Principles. The bulletin addressed an overarching framework that the OCC sees as best practices for risk management principles in the following areas:
July 12th, 2019
Elder abuse, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), conservatively costs our senior population more than $3 billion dollars annually. The DOJ, with support from the U.S. Postal Inspector and the Secret Service, have been focused on targeting those transnational criminal organizations that target elders with their varied schemes. As part of this effort, the DOJ alone has handled cases for frauds involving more than 2 million U.S. victims with losses totaling more than $750 million. Altogether, more than 260 criminal and civil defendants have been caught in the enforcement effort designed to protect our senior citizens.
May 22nd, 2019
Real-time payments have finally arrived in the U.S. market after being enabled in more than 40 countries previously. Unfortunately, the extra time to prepare didn’t translate to financial institutions (FIs) being ready; other fraud concerns took their focus away from the possibility of faster payments.
May 21st, 2019
For decades we, as a society, have defined prostitution as simply a proactive choice made by men and women to make a living. Even though attitudes are changing, there is still a pervasive belief that this activity is not something that affects us day-to-day — and I fully disagree with that thinking. Throughout my career, I struggled to establish focus on the issues around prostitution and its impact on all of us, including those caught up in its inhuman web. In the face of business leaders who often asked me, “Why is this our problem?,” or who comment “That is AML, not fraud’s problem,” I am here to firmly remind you that this situation is an “everyone” problem.