This summer sees a dual-track review of money laundering regulations by UK Treasury, comprising both a statutory instrument review and a ‘back to first principles’ review which provides a unique opportunity to assess the economic crime landscape with the aim of identifying improvements that can be made to the system as a whole.
This provided for a thought-provoking discussion between our panellists in our latest webinar ‘How and why to embed anti-fraud detection methodologies into an AML regime’ which is now available on demand.
The webinar is presented by Chris Lewis, Head of Solutions at Synectics Solutions along with guest panellists Matt Jones, Head of Financial Crime and MLRO for Sainsbury’s Bank, Simon Pitts-Drake, Sales Director EMEA from ComplyAdvantage and Aminah Samad, Principal – Economic Crime Policy for UK Finance.
The panel discusses how AML and fraud teams need to work more effectively together to reduce the harm of fraud and wider economic crime, rather than continuing to co-exist in the siloes that are prevalent across many financial organisations. The reasons for this are plentiful and backed up by both theory and practice during the discussion:
- Fraud and AML overlap significantly with teams often tracking the same individuals and the same types of criminality. It is hard for a person to commit money laundering without first committing fraud, so it stands to reason that anti-fraud data and operational measures will be of benefit in the fight against money laundering.
- Having an end-to-end view of the financial crime lifecycle - with real rigour around risk assessment throughout that lifecycle - should enable organisations to put robust controls in place proactively. There is a recognition of the need to act now rather than waiting for a new regulatory framework.
- The breadth of data-sources available can make for a complex process of merging, interrogating and creating meaningful insight but the potential to identify risk much earlier in the customer lifecycle is seen to far out-weigh these challenges.
- Bringing anti-fraud and AML together can reduce false positives, increase the speed of customer onboarding and better classify risk earlier in the customer lifecycle.