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Banks Favor Risk-Based AML Programs, But Need Guidance
By Brian Monroe
printFinancial institutions and regulators agree that risk-based anti-money laundering (AML) programs allow institutions the flexibility to guard against financial crime without inconveniencing customers or leaving blueprints for criminals to master. Yet a survey of 34 government entities and large banks by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suggests they don't agree on how individual institutions should adopt the approach, whereby banks identify their risks then allocate AML resources to the most vulnerable areas. The FATF, a Paris-based organization that sets international AML standards, asked regulators and financial firms in 16 jurisdictions to define the key elements of a risk-based approach,...
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In every longstanding relationship, there comes a point when both parties begin to question something they once thought they had agreed on. Talk to a Bank Secrecy Act officer at a conference, over dinner or in a bar and one point of friction with federal regulators inevitably becomes clear.
U.S. officials will soon ask an influential intergovernmental group to call on its members to relax laws preventing bank affiliates from sharing data on suspected financial crimes, say sources.
The world's premier financial crime watchdog declined Friday to suspend Turkey's membership and disclosed how its assessors will begin evaluating jurisdictions on the efficacy with which they fight illicit finance.
The Financial Action Task Force is set to implement a two-tiered grading system for future mutual evaluations as part of an effort to better score the efficacy of anti-money laundering regimes.
An intergovernmental group's revised expectations of how countries should seize looted assets may prove difficult to meet, and could lower the mutual evaluation scores nations receive for their anti-money laundering controls.
The Financial Action Task Force threatened Friday to suspend Turkey's membership if the country fails to pass counterterrorist financing laws ahead of a Feb. 22 meeting by the group.
An intergovernmental group that evaluates how countries fight money laundering and terrorist financing will change how it grades compliance with its standards beginning next year, say individuals familiar with discussions.
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The U.S. Treasury Department will issue guidance expanding on pending regulations in an effort to plug compliance gaps ahead of the Financial Action Task Force's next review of the United States.
Intergovernmental evaluations of how nations fight money laundering and terrorist financing often do not accurately reflect whether those efforts are effective, the International Monetary Fund said in a report Wednesday.
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Since 2008, federal financial regulators have increasingly quizzed compliance staff about such scenarios in an effort to determine how banks are distinguishing their low-, moderate- and high-risk clients, according to bank officials.
A report by an intergovernmental watchdog highlighting the anti-money laundering weaknesses of more than two dozen countries is prompting non-bank financial institutions to drop customers and avoid risky markets.
Gauging the vulnerability of money service businesses' agents to being used to launder money or finance terrorism is central to adopting a risk-based approach to compliance, according to a global watchdog report released Monday.
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The Financial Action Task Force identified key elements of gauging geographic and other risks and of defining acceptable threat levels to aid governments and financial institutions adopting a risk-based approach to their anti-money laundering programs.