Doing more with less: Improving the anti-money laundering surveillance program

May 2008
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Doing more with less: Improving the anti-money laundering surveillance program: PwC

At a glance

Monitoring customer activity for money laundering and terrorist financing is one of the most daunting compliance challenges for financial institutions. At PwC, we have professionals who perform moneylaundering vulnerability assessments, compliance program evaluations, and gap analyses. We can develop a recommended approach for reducing risk, enhancing risk management, and applying operational solutions.

Monitoring customer activity for money laundering and terrorist financing is one of the most daunting compliance challenges for financial institutions. Although they have made significant investments in time, money, and people to meet this challenge, many banks still have not realized operational excellence. Even today, many surveillance teams sift through thousands of alerts generated by their anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring systems to find only a small number of suspicious incidents. And for many, the sheer volume of alerts creates a backlog that puts them at risk for noncompliance, regulatory criticism, and cost overruns.

The problem: A number of banks installed an AML surveillance program without tailoring it to meet their specific needs.