Accuity Insights Blog

Regulators are getting serious about the quality of sanctions screening programmes. Institutions around the world need to be prepared, advises Sophie Lagouanelle, Head of Solutions at Accuity.

Banks desperately need to meet compliance requirements without slowing down transactions or damaging customer relationships, but KYC screening still involves sorting through huge amounts of unstructured data, using manual and repetitive processes.

The identification of legal entities’ beneficial owners has been part of FATF Recommendations since 2003. It is a cornerstone of Customer Due Diligence measures for the international standard setter in the field of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML-CTF) matters. The latest Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) rule on Customer Due Diligence (CDD Rule) is […]

The new compliance obligations placed on non-financial businesses are stringent, but help is at hand. Last summer, tens of thousands of people flooded onto the streets of Santo Domingo, dressed mostly in green. The Marcha Verde protests were a clear indication of the strength of public feeling about the Dominican Republic’s history of corruption in […]

Banks and non-banking financial institutions now need to ensure that they are on top of their compliance requirements – and able to demonstrate this to regulators. Asia’s diversity of geography, legal systems and cultures poses challenges for businesses operating intra-regionally and globally which are required to ensure their activities don’t enable money laundering and the many crimes it facilitates.

Versions of this article originally published in Global Banking & Finance Review and Trade Financing Matters. In the twelve months from January to December 2017, over 4,500 vessels in the container, bulker and tanker fleet completed 30,000 visits to OFAC sanctioned terminals (Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and the Crimea). Whilst not every vessel visit […]

Recent news that a Maersk company carried arms components from North Korea to Egypt, in a violation of international sanctions, acts as a fresh warning for those facilitating global trade to be diligent in monitoring and reporting suspicious activity. The transportation of electrical components by a Maersk subsidiary, which had the potential to be used […]

The UK government has announced new plans to crack down on money laundering as part of its response to a consultation on the billions of pounds of high-end UK property owned by overseas shell companies.[1] This is the latest in a series of measures designed to prevent criminals from exploiting the property market and, according […]

At the latest Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting, 35 countries, the European Commission and the Gulf Co-operation Council urged the international body to improve understanding of money laundering risk related to cryptocurrencies. In light of this, Michael LaScola, Business Solution Specialist at Accuity, discusses some AML best practices for ICOs and why they should […]

The suspicion that runaway property prices in major Canadian cities are driven, at least in part, by illicit international investment won’t go away. According to a report by Transparency International, almost half of the most valuable residences in Greater Vancouver area are held through corporate structures that hide their ultimate owner, including a third that […]

While there is a conflict between US state and federal legislation on marijuana trading, financial institutions need to protect themselves from penalties that could result from onboarding marijuana businesses as customers.

Trade-based money laundering, typically through trade mis-invoicing, has become the main vehicle for illicit financial flows (IFFs) around the globe. This form of money laundering involves deliberately misreporting the value of a commercial transaction on an invoice submitted to customs. Global Financial Integrity (GFI), the non-profit research and advisory organization focused on illicit financial flows studies, estimates that […]