A recently-conducted survey reported that a full two-thirds of responding banks have found that the SEPA Credit Transfer rules implemented in January 2008 are negatively impacting their profits. It's been said before — SEPA was not designed to reduce costs but rather to improve efficiency, so unfavorable profitability is not a terribly surprising result. These findings do, however, drive home the fact that there are ever-increasing costs for payment processing. When facing the increased challenges posed by SEPA, corporations and financial institutions alike need other ways to reduce their costs for cross-border payments. Automating manual functions and improving the quality of their payments data in order to increase payment straight through processing (STP) rates is a natural place to start. Accuity has seen payment STP rates in excess of 97% for those organizations that have instituted best practices — rates at this level will almost certainly reduce costs and improve profitability. With another SEPA scheme going live next year, identifying new efficiencies and avenues to maintain the profitability of cross-border payment processing will obviously become all the more important.

Trade and Technology: The New AML Battleground
The escalation in trade and technology-based money laundering poses serious risks to institutions. Sophisticated, trade-based money laundering schemes are difficult to detect because the perpetrators greatly distance themselves from the money laundering process. Technology has advanced our ability to monitor and identify suspicious patterns of activity. However, in the hands of money launderers, it facilitates innovative cyber schemes making your institution vulnerable to criminal and terrorist exploitation.

This seminar will provide you with the intelligence and training you need to guard against becoming the target of money launderers or government investigators. www.moneylaundering.com/hottopic.

In recent years, Switzerland has ramped up its anti-money laundering efforts to combat its reputation as a secrecy haven. One notable case that’s been in progress for over a decade recently concluded with the Swiss Justice Ministry identifying that $74 million in deposits belonging to Raul Salinas, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, were “misappropriated.”

While the definition of a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) varies widely from country to country, it always includes the most senior national officials as well as their immediate family members and known business associates. Raul was likely a PEP the day he opened the account in which the misappropriated funds were held — knowing that up-front might have meant closer scrutinization of those $74 million. Identifying such individuals during the client on-boarding process through PEP screening can alert you to potentially high-risk customers. This, in turn, fosters the need for heightened ongoing transaction monitoring for accounts belonging to such customers. The quality of your PEP list, therefore, might mean the difference between your firm alerting the authorities to possible money laundering and your firm being the target of a regulatory investigation.