Before the COVID pandemic hit the world stage, organisations already faced challenges, not only from the number of regulatory changes introduced on a daily basis, but also from the number of FinTech and RegTech solution providers entering the market in order to find the right provider to support their fight against financial crime. Most organisations have implemented Compliance Risk Management Programmes to support the implementation of the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendement Act in 2019; however, organisations had to innovate, by changing their ways of work, and that in itself brought additonal challenges to the fore. In order for organisations to fully understand their exposure to AML/CFT and Sanctions Risks, it is important for them to have a view of their risk exposure.
We, at Marshall, have the experience through the execution of multiple business risk assessments to work with organisations to assess their inherert risks, review their control enviroments and ultimately, to document their risidual risks and to build roadmaps to address the risks through projects and programmes.
We have also worked with organisations to assist them with solution evalutions, through formal RFI’s and RFP’s.
The sheer scope of money laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes continues to grow at an alarming rate. As 2020 ushered in the global pandemic, organised crime networks exploited the opportunities inherent in the changing financial landscape to boost their money laundering and fraud activities, and their profits as well. The result has been an increase in mule activity, identity theft, and application fraud.
Rules-based detection was an outdated mode of surveillance before 2020, but the opportunism of organised crime networks following the outbreak of the pandemic have further underscored the need to rethink how institutions detect financial crime.
Organisations need to stay ahead, and one area is for them to assess their Transaction Monitoring Application, review and tune the rules based on their Risk Based Approach and we have skilled resources at Marshall to support organisations with this, bringing our knowledge and experience into play.