Several times over the last few years KPMG has taken a global look at anti-money laundering (AML) and at companies' attitudes towards it. Its most recent survey looked at the ways in which organisations are preventing, detecting, and responding to AML compliance risks.

Here are some of the key findings:
• As many as 88% of senior management said AML is a priority - the highest figure since KPMG started monitoring the area in 2004
• Costs continue to rise by an average of 53% for banking institutions
• A global approach to AML has been adopted in most cases, but among them only 32% feel they are able to maintain global consistency across subsidiaries and branches
• Transaction monitoring systems continue to represent the greatest area of AML spending - but satisfaction with the efficiency and effectiveness of these systems has declined compared to previous surveys
• The pace and impact of regulatory changes were rated as significant challenges to business operations by 84% of respondents

In short, the main thing to take from all this is that transaction monitoring costs are continuing to rise as satisfaction declines and as nervousness about regulatory changes grows. With the arrival this year of the EU's Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive as well as other legislative enhancements in individual national jurisdictions, the heat is truly on.

What financial services organisations need is obvious: it's an approach to AML that's flexible, robust, reliable and global but that's also cost-effective.

Answering this need is Predator from GBGroup. Predator operates across all channels of incoming and outgoing transactions to achieve accurate and consistent AML monitoring. It ticks the main boxes, by satisfying AML requirements and offering intelligent case management.

But it does much more than this. It also protects against fraud (naturally). It offers in-built testing of both AML and fraud rules, and the full automation of regulatory reporting - reducing operational costs. What's more, it enhances an organisation's reputation by streamlining operations: the fast, accurate measurement of performance it offers keeps false positive rates low.

All customer transactions are checked in real time against a customised decision workflow for suspicious characteristics or fraud indicators. Rules and fraud models can be changed and updated instantly to keep up with evolving money laundering and fraud typologies - which is just as well when you consider how sophisticated money launderers and fraudsters can be.

One last thing: it's no wonder banking organisations are more concerned than ever about AML. Many of the biggest bank fines were for non-compliance reasons…

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