Tackling the complexity of Anti-Money Laundering compliance

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. Meeting your AML compliance obligations can be challenging as the rules are occasionally complex and frequently changing. Even after seemingly getting to grips with all this complexity, expect that things will change. More often than not, this will be down to elements beyond your control. This is why tackling the complexity of Anti-Money Laundering compliance is possibly one of the biggest challenges that affected organisations face today.

If the change impacts the risk-based evaluation, it will require a re-assessment of your clients. Countries get added or removed from FATF lists. Individuals get sanctioned. Regulators may come up with new requirements. Documents related to your customers expire. And this is just the beginning.

The fluid nature of the AML compliance landscape is unlikely to change anytime soon. It is important to remember that with change, comes risk. It’s how businesses handle this risk that can help reduce the complexity of AML compliance management. If you’re still reliant upon manual processes, or spreadsheets, with information stored in various placed throughout the organisation, you’re making AML compliance harder than it needs to be.

A lack of structure or discipline when it comes to AML compliance management can have a detrimental impact on your business and the effects can be felt by customers and employees alike. Chaotic, time-consuming internal process can lead to employee dissatisfaction, generate an opportunity cost and expose the business to unnecessary risk. Worse still, it can lead to a poor customer experience and potential loss of revenue and reputation.

One way to instil discipline, efficiency and auditability is to deploy the right AML compliance software. The market for AML solutions is fairly competitive, so how do you know what’s the right solution for you? Here are a few key questions to ask yourself when evaluating the alternatives:

1. Is the solution flexible? Can it be configured to work the way you work, rather than forcing your teams to change the way they work?
2. Is the initial deployment supported by a team of developers and success managers that ensure user adoption and provide ongoing training?
3. Does it feature a centralised database that provides a single version of the truth? Does this database have access controls and are all events auditable?
4. Does it allow for the effective enforcement of processes across the businesses? Is it possible to view pending tasks on a business-wide level, or drill down to individual employee tasks?
5. Does it generate reports that support day-to-day operations and compliance requirements as well as ad hoc requests from inside and outside the business?
6. Does it make it easy to identify ultimate beneficial owners?
7. Does it automate updates from external data sources, such as local and international sanction lists?
8. Does it alert you to outstanding tasks, such as risk assessments, missing data, expiring documents and incomplete UBO lists?

For professional services organisations (especially accountants, auditors, solicitors and company service providers), AML compliance can be complex, time-consuming and risky. Eliminate all of these challenges by introducing a solution custom-built for compliance. This is why we recommend InScope-AML for tackling the complexity of Anti-Money Laundering compliance.

Tackling the complexity of Anti-Money Laundering compliance with InScope-AML

InScope-AML is a comprehensive software solution for all your AML and KYC compliance needs.

InScope-AML simplifies compliance obligations, enforces robust and consistent processes, and helps your organisation focus on what is important. It introduces an end-to-end, automated solution that provides you with a 360-degree view of your customers.

To understand why you need specialised software to manage AML compliance effectively, please click here.

For more information about InScope-AML, please download our eBook here.

If you are interested in scheduling a one-on-one discussion with one of our consultants, you can book a call here.

Or schedule a demo for an in-depth look into InScope-AML.