Do Compliance Managers Need a Shoulder to Lean on When it Comes to AML?

April 2018 Kompli-Global

Across the globe, anti-money laundering (AML) legislation is becoming ever more rigorous and ever more complex. Do financial services compliance managers need help bearing the burden? Jane Jee, CEO of Kompli- Global, explains how artificial intelligence (AI) is providing them with the support they need to combat financial crime.

Money laundering and the financing of terrorism are more than just crimes, they have a genuine, quantifiable economic impact1.

Exploiting the complexity of the international financial system, as well as differences between national laws to move their money with impunity, criminals drain resources from a country’s economy, impacting on the provision of vital public services.

In addition to this, they can contribute to terror incidents that cause significant harm to other nations which negatively affects global trade, right up to the detriment of international peace and prosperity.

Time for Coordinated Action

To respond to this issue, national governments need to have effective regimes in place to prevent laundering from occurring.

For a growing number of governments, including the UK and US, the best solution is the implementation of strict Anti-Money Laundering (AML) legislation, alongside so- called “Know Your Customer” (KYC) regulations. In order to continue trading in these lucrative jurisdictions, financial services companies must have processes in place to meet these standards.

Such regulation is doing a lot to minimise the risk of money laundering and terrorism financing. Nevertheless, their complexity means that they are becoming more and more difficult for compliance managers to deal with on their own. It is clear that compliance teams need access to advanced tools in order to help them monitor customers and meet regulatory bodies’ stringent due diligence requirements.

The Right Tools for the Job

In a world of ever more complex AML legislation, a growing number of compliance managers are turning to regulatory technology (RegTech) to provide them with the support they need. And, more and more, they are looking for artificial intelligence (AI) RegTech as an ideal assistant to help them comply with regulations.

AI offers considerable advantages over a human assistant when it comes to monitoring data and adverse information on customers. It doesn’t sleep or need a break, but can work around the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, constantly analysing data on new and existing customers to provide compliance managers with a warning the instant a critical item is found, so they can take action straightaway.

Benefiting from Advanced AI

Cutting-edge AI can do so much more than simple searching though – it can offer a host of additional features designed to support compliance managers in providing the deeper due diligence required not only to comply with regulations, but to help businesses play a greater part in eliminating the issue of money laundering.

One key example is Kompli- Global’s Samantha. This new digital compliance assistant within Kompli-Global’s SaaS- based search platform, kompli- IQ, is capable of exploring information far beyond the small region of the internet that we as ordinary users access every day. It explores the un- indexed “Deep Web”, analysing millions of uncategorised items of data to identify any adverse information about a business’s customers, and their associates.

Samantha works around the clock, monitoring all of an organisation’s customer portfolio, and hunting for some 500 “stem words” commonly linked with financial crime. The technology is multi-lingual, enabling it to carry out these checks not just on English documents, but on files in every language and local dialect.

Samantha then reports back to risk managers on areas worthy of further investigation, requiring verification of suppressed or falsified information.

Boosting Productivity

In addition to supporting compliance managers in ensuring due diligence checks are comprehensive and compliant with regulations, AI solutions like Samantha can also significantly boost the productivity of individual team members.

Where it would take a human days or weeks to explore this information, it can take Samantha minutes to conduct the checks and interrogations that find indications of potential financial crimes – “bad actors”.

Moreover, Samantha is voice- activated, allowing compliance

managers to interact with her just as they would a human assistant. They can ask her to carry out a search, without the need for them to be at their desks, freeing them to perform other vital tasks while she is working away on the problem at hand.

Working alongside the expertise and insight of human managers, solutions such as Samantha can play an unrivalled role in helping banks not only find critical information that otherwise wouldn’t be available, but optimise time- and cost- effectiveness too.

Time to Ask for Help

Every day, it seems, money- launderers and terrorism financers are developing ever more sophisticated tools to commit crimes, so it is no surprise that governments are responding with such strict legal requirements. However, this means that the challenge facing compliance managers will only grow more complex, as they try to meet the high standards set by legislation.

Having the right tools to hand can help them overcome this issue. Technology like Samantha can support compliance managers in carrying out their important work. Combined with the judgement of human managers, AI can help protect both individual businesses and the wider economy from financial crime well into the future.

Jane Jee

CEO of Kompli-Global

Jane passionately believes that good compliance makes good business sense.

After qualifying as a barrister, Jane gained broad experience in card-based, e-money, internet and mobile payments having worked in commercial (marketing) and legal roles in the sector for over 20 years.

She was Managing Director at Access, the credit card issuing and acquiring organisation, and later became Divisional Manager at Mondex International where she became familiar with e-money regulation.

Jane is now focused on delivering Kompli Global’s unique Gold Standard” Compliance Service which fully meets regulatory requirements and enables clients to take on new business and retain it, confident that they have access to the best available information and expertise to fulfill their compliance obligations.