Anti-Money Laundering (AML) is no joke. It is a serious subject that needs to be the top priority in any type of business that deals with any type of financial transactions. There are many pieces of high tech that can be added to your current procedures, some of them are more complicated than the others.
We are not here to discuss that, though. What we are going to cover are the best practices that you can do to keep your company in compliance. These are things that you need to do internally to ensure compliance.
- Assign Tasks-You need to assign people to specific tasks. It is never a good idea to assume that all of your people will step up and do their part in staying compliant with the AML regulations that have been put into place. For example, you need to assign one person to be in charge of reviewing the analytics that your system spits out. You need to have one person that is assigned to make sure compliance is taken seriously by all the front-line workers. And so on, you get the point. The people that you assign to each area should be management or supervisors that you know will take the task seriously.
- Set Procedures-As with the step above, you cannot just assume that the people working for you will use their knowledge and common sense to pick up on potential criminal activities. That should definitely be a part of a person’s attitude when you hire them, but you need to have set policies and procedures in place. Ones that must be followed at all times, which is where the compliance officer discussed above comes into play. The people working for you need set rules and perimeters that they must follow. Ones that leave no room for personal adjustments.
- Reporting-Part of AML compliance that should be set in stone is the procedure for reporting any issues that may arise. This should be stressed when training any new people and should be covered in the meetings that you hold for the entire business. The first step should always be to have a manager go over the transaction and analyze all of the pertinent information. From there, if it does appear to be a criminal activity the manager will need to pass it up the chain to the compliance officer to analyze. And so on until it gets reported to the local governing agency.
- Teach and Train: This is a part of the hiring process that should be gone over. Modern technology platforms offer computer training that can include simulations to help them learn how to see things that should be red flags. Even after the initial hiring and training, someone that has been placed in charge of HR responsibilities should constantly be teaching and training. New things come up every day. Criminals find new ways to attempt laundering or scamming, so all people that work in the financial industries need to keep up with daily changes. Sometimes hourly.
The best practices that should be used to keep your company in compliance all begin, and end, with you and the people that work for you. It is natural to expect people to be honest and law abiding, but many times that is not going to be the case. Criminals are everywhere, and some of them still think that they are untouchable. Innovative technology gives them all new ways to commit crimes, but it also gives all of us new ways to catch, track, and catch them in the act. AML compliance needs to be a top priority in your company and to ensure that is the case you will have compliance officers checking in with you at random intervals.