Captivated Audience: A Financial Crime Podcast SJSML

Marie Lundberg and Sam Sheen are joined by Ina Rothe who explains the twists and turns of using Germany's Company Register (referred to as the Transparency Register) as part of the KYC process.  Did you know that Germany has more than one register or that the information you want might be spread across several different registers? Or how about needing to pay to get access to some KYC information and the various exemptions that allow some legal entities to provide nothing at all? If you work with customers who have businesses using German legal entities, this episode is a great practical tutorial on how to wrangle this no-so-transparent corporate register.

AND as they say, serendipity is a funny thing - following the recording of this episode, a new law, the Transparency Register and Financial Information Act, came into force in Germany on 1 August 2021.  The changes it introduces are intended to transform the German Transparency Register to  provide direct information on beneficial owners for all legal entities with very few exceptions - without having to refer to other registers as has been the case up until now.  Many a legal entity so far exempt from notifying the transparency register of their UBOs will now have to make the effort to report UBO information, even if it may already be listed on other registers. There is a transitional period for legal entities to comply and report and users of the transparency register may - in theory - expect completion of UBO input by the end of 2022. 

Jane Jee, Chair Kompli-Global Limited and Chair Project Financial Crime, Emerging Payments Association (UK) talks to Marie Lundberg and Sam Sheen about her involvement in the pre-consultation in her role with the Emerging Payments Association to urge the UK Government to engage more with RegTechs as part of their planned review of the Money Laundering Regulations and the plans in the UK for its well known corporate registry - Companies House. Jane shares the story of Kompli's evolution of its financial crime RegTech and how it has leveraged the data from Companies House to better detect odd things in the registry's data. 

Jane, Sam and Marie look at the nine-fold increase in requests for information by enforcement from Companies House for investigation purposes; the upcoming changes that will be introduced by the registry to change the way in which they operate, their powers to verify data, requiring companies to do more in terms of how they supply the data, Companies House business plans involving massive transformation from technology usage, process and even culture. Jane talks about the extent to which Companies House has reached out to RegTechs to see what the potential tools at their disposal are along with the overall need by regulators to also harness the use of RegTech to undertake their supervisory tasks and make them more efficient.

Jane concludes her chat by sharing some sage advice on how best to check the data on a register and the places KYC reviewers may not think to look for that might suggest a financial crime red flag has unfurled. 

Marie Lundberg and Sam Sheen are joined again by Al Catto, Managing Director of Beyond, to discuss all things change related when it comes to AML/CFT compliance programs. We start Part 2 by discussing the way in which FinTech's approach change and its impact on key AML projects; the importance of test planning to make sure the change you want has the intended impact,  and the politics involved in major change initiatives. We also explore the risk of being too inflexible when it comes to your change plan, how it's unrealistic to expect it to all go perfectly and the value in being flexible - you don't always get it right even as the Change Coordinator. We also consider how best to deal with those "naysayers" who have little faith that the RegTech you want to use will improve your customer onboarding. And finally - what makes for a a successful "change conductor" - should you wallow in the compliance drama or can you rise above the mayhem like a former colleague known as "the Smoke" (you'll have to listen to find out!).

Ch-ch ch-ch changes! Al Catto joins Sam Sheen and Marie Lundberg to talk about his company, Beyond and their speciality - change transformation involving AML/CFT programmes.  Turning around failed RegTech or even onboarding processes is no easy task. Al shares his insights on the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to successfully implementing a transformation project.  Want faster KYC? Streamlined CDD onboarding? Will KYC RegTech solve the cost of compliance every time?  And where does customer data fit into all of this?  Learn about the tips - and traps - that firms often fall into when trying to solve that ever present problem - the balance between operations and customer satisfaction and the cost of financial crime compliance. Part 1 of 2 podcasts.

David Christie, Chairman of Bleckwen, joins Marie and Sam to chat about the amazing world of behaviour detection and how Bleckwen has harnessed machine learning to better detect fraudulent and suspicious behaviour. With a name linked to a "truth serum", Bleckwen has been involved in some "deep truth" investigations dealing with better detection of complex fraud such as PPP fraud, where it is a challenge for banks with larger legacy systems. Credit origination fraud, synthetic ID fraud, and oddities in transaction monitoring patterns, according to David it's all about behaviour.  Marie dives into the use of graph theory - did you know it was used to design London's tube system? - the same approach is used by Bleckwen to identify patterns across banks accounts and parties, how they interact, how often and other similarities.  David also explains how they encourage their team to go further afield to keep their thinking fresh - could Tweets prior to the Catalan unrest in 2018 have helped to detect it earlier?  Sharing their intelligence and some of their algorithms to the wider financial crime prevention community (for free) is an important part of Bleckwen's approach to being a part of the financial crime community. 

Sam Sheen and Marie Lundberg are joined by Aamir Hanif, a globe-trotting financial crime compliance expert, to talk about all things related to free ports and free trade zones.  Having been identified as having an elevated risk for financial crime, Aamir explains how Free Trade Zone companies are operated, who controls them, accessing KYC information about their UBOs, while Marie raises a good point: Maybe when it comes to free ports, what do we need to do to "know your container".  With reported risks of FTZ and the link connected to the volume of conterfeit goods traded in a country.  With the UK soon introducing its own free ports post-Brexit, this is a must listen for fellow financial crime compliance professionals.