The team at Banking Circle, a leading financial infrastructure developer, notes that as the first quarter of 2021 comes to an end, anti-money laundering or AML measures have been “a key focus in the industry.”
The company writes in a blog post that following the news from McKinsey that anywhere between $800 billion to $2 trillion is laundered every year through the international financial system, Banking Circle looked into ways that bad actors are using more advanced techniques to launder funds.
The Banking Circle team confirmed that they conducted a webinar with UK Finance which was focused on Driving better banking, and was joined by a panel of industry professionals who talked about how partnerships are helping banking institutions deal with innovation challenges and ways in which the current landscape is “likely to change over the coming year.”
Banking Circle went to confirm in their blog post that they’re now fully Cloud-based, with all aspects of their infrastructure currently being hosted within Microsoft Azure. The new Cloud-first, cross-border payments solution was developed in-house and aims to offer improved speed, functionality, and “a more intuitive user experience,” the company revealed.
While sharing other updates, the Banking Circle team noted:
“To recognize the emergence of new risks and changing EU legislative framework, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has released updated guidelines on customer due diligence, and the factors that credit and financial institutions should consider when assessing the money laundering and terrorist financing risks associated with individual business relationships and occasional transactions.”
In supporting firms with their AML/CTF compliance requirements, certain revisions or modifications to the guidelines were made in the following key areas, Banking Circle noted:
- Business-wide and individual ML/TF risk assessments
- Customer due diligence measures, “including on the beneficial owner Terrorist financing risk factors”
- Guidance on growing risks, “including the use of innovative solutions for CDD purposes”
Banking Circle went on to share a recent report from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Egmont Group, which was drafted in order to improve the ability of public and private entities when it comes to identifying “suspicious activity associated with trade-based money laundering.”
The risk indicators are “derived from a sampling of the data received during the Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML) project and span four key areas,” Banking Circle added while noting that they include: Structural risk indicators; Trade activity risk indicators; Trade document and commodity risk indicators; and Account and transaction activity risk indicators.
The financial infrastructure development firm added:
“The EU Commission has announced that the EU Council of Ministers approved its fully integrated retail payment system strategy on 22 March 2021. The strategy aims to permit payments within seconds for purchases made online and in stores around the EU, with countries fully endorsing this as a means to reduce their reliance on ‘large global players’ in the payment sector. It was also revealed that the member states support the Commission’s announcement that it will be conducting a thorough analysis of the ongoing PSD2 implementation.”
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