Financial Crime Unit

Specialists in preventing and detecting financial crime

Your partner in fighting financial crime

The South East Asia Consulting Financial Crime Unit (FCU) is a team of financial crime professionals located across the region. Our vision is to create a more secure and prosperous society by helping fight the pervasive impact of global financial crime.

Our diverse team consists of policy and regulation advisors, operations professionals, data and analytics, and technology practitioners, with significant depth and breadth of experience of helping clients contend with their most pressing financial crime challenges.

We are committed to the fight against financial crime in all its forms. Through the use of technology deployed with strong operational discipline, we bring innovative solutions that allow our clients to effectively prevent and detect financial crime.

Our regional presence

Financial Crime Unit Statistics Map

We’re a leader in financial crime consulting and operations

The FCU has been recognised as an industry leader for our differentiated operations capability, market impact and vision.

Financial Crime Unit Quote

Our services

Financial Crime Unit Services Wheel

Identifying the root causes of failure

It is impossible to effectively remediate an issue without first fully understanding the root cause. If this is done effectively, organisations can emerge stronger out of any issue. We help financial institutions to establish the facts and get to the bottom of financial crime issues including regulatory breaches, individual misconduct, control or system failure and senior management accountability.

Fixing the issue

Remediation can be a challenging and complex exercise, often undertaken in a high-stress environment with significant penalties for failure to deliver. We mobilise our highly skilled subject matter advisors and technology and operational specialists, to help our clients to fix identified issues, either on premises or offshore in our FCU Operations Centers. Our approach to remediation considers both granular, operational-level issues as well as systemic issues including organizational structure, governance, culture, technology and policy.

Preparing for the future of financial crime

Criminals are innovating, regulations are changing, technology is becoming ever more sophisticated, business margins are constantly under pressure and consumer expectations are evolving. To keep pace with these changes, financial institutions are always looking for more effective ways to fight financial crime. We support our clients in this transformation, from enhancing operating models, policies and procedures, to developing systems and controls that detect, measure, manage or mitigate risk in the most effective ways.

Executing for success

We support businesses with the execution of their financial crime operational processes on a business as usual basis. Through our scalable resource model that provides flexible access to skilled analysts, commitment to ongoing process improvement and application of cutting edge technology, we are able to offer managed service operations at a lower price point while ensuring high quality results.

Our Manila Financial Crime Operations Center

The FCU has established a specialist Financial Crime Operations Center (FCOC) in Manila providing a unique solution for clients looking for high quality, skilled teams that can deliver operations with cost effective resources. Our center is the only specialist financial crime operations center in the region and supports financial institutions with a global footprint, and has a particular capability in delivering KYC, enhanced due diligence and transaction monitoring operations. It offers end to end remediation support, as well as business-as-usual managed services for the outsourcing of financial crime operations. At the Manila FCOC, we are proud that:

  • Our production, productivity and operational quality performance consistently meets and exceeds client expectations
  • We have a dedicated PMO and data analytics team
  • Our flexible resourcing model allows us to scale up or down with ease to meet client needs
  • We leverage a deep talent pool at an effective cost point
  • Our strong people focus results in high staff engagement and retention

Our financial crime technology services

Our technology specialists help clients with the requirements of financial crime surveillance, monitoring and remediation in a data-driven world. We support clients across the technology lifecycle:

  • Architecture review: establish the need for investment
  • Vendor selection: identify the most suitable technology partners
  • Requirements definition: understand business and functional needs
  • Implementation: manage data, systems and testing required for implementation
  • Post go-live support: support ongoing operations and maintenance

Core financial crime processes we support

Client lifecycle management

We understand the key milestones in the client lifecycle for financial institutions. We support financial institutions in developing processes that can manage risks, enable informed decision-making and satisfy customers. This includes support on:

  • Client onboarding
  • Customer due diligence/ enhanced due diligence
  • Periodic review
  • Name screening
  • Offboarding

Learn more

Transaction monitoring

We support financial institutions in contending with the dual challenges of detecting suspicious transactions and managing the operational rigour required to conduct effective investigations on the output of their monitoring solutions. From scenario optimisation or insights on the latest machine learning solutions to advice on operating model optimisation, we have insight in the following areas:

  • Model tuning and validation
  • Alerts handling
  • Regulatory assessment

Fraud

Fraud is a complex challenge for all financial institutions impacting customers, reputation and shareholder value. We provide a range of anti-fraud services to help financial institutions to build and strengthen anti-fraud programs in a cost effective way, including:

  • Fraud risk assessments
  • Design and implementation of fraud controls
  • Fraud surveillance support including technology vendor analysis

Delivering big

Learn more by reading our client success stories.

Assessing transaction monitoring risk and typologies

Our client required support identifying coverage gaps in the selection of rules of the current state transaction monitoring system across over a dozen countries in the Asia Pacific region to address money laundering risks inherent in the products and services offered by the bank. By analysing and grouping over 1,500 money laundering and terrorist financing red flags from over 120 sources, we conducted a gap analysis to understand the bank’s residual risk. Based on this exercise, we provided the client with a prioritised roadmap on areas requiring remediation and identified areas for global-level alignment of transaction monitoring rules.

Conducting an AML operations transformation

Our client required a rapid injection of operation capability and capacity to manage their transaction monitoring alert volume & process. We conducted an end-to-end analysis of current transaction monitoring operations, business requirements and target operating model. We designed a remediation roadmap, uplifted capability and capacity, ensured alignment with regulations and best practices and facilitated the long-term implementation of the AML transformation strategy.

Managing the periodic review cycle

Our client required help to conduct periodic reviews of their corporate and financial institution clients. We rapidly deployed a team of 50 analysts, quality control staff and subject matter experts in our Manila FCOC. We onboarded the team onto bank systems, conducted policy training, defined an efficient process flow including quality control gates and designed suitable governance and management reporting. We were able to complete all the cases within the client’s timeline to the quality standards required while actively improving efficiency.

{{filterContent.facetedTitle}}

{{contentList.loadingText}}

Contact us

Andrea Amatuzio

Andrea Amatuzio

Partner, Financial Crime Unit, South East Asia Consulting, PwC Singapore

Tel: +65 8855 5837

Follow us