Midyear review: Innovation, acclaim in Covid-changed world
By Frank Cummings, CEO of AML Partners
If 2020 at the halfway point for AML Partners could be summed up in a few words, it would be these: Celebrate, Innovate, and Comply and Carry On.
Celebration: RegTech 100 for third year in a row
We kicked off the year with some celebratory news from FinTech Global and RegTechAnalyst. For the third year in a row, those organizations named AML Partners to the prestigious RegTech 100. The RegTech 100 list recognizes “the next-generation of solution providers shaping the future of the compliance, risk management and cybersecurity industries. The list aims to help senior management and compliance professionals evaluate which solutions have market potential and are most likely to succeed and have a lasting impact on the industry.”
The RegTech 100 for us is very special in that we exist as a company due to our drive to innovate on behalf of our clients. Early in our AML careers, my co-founder Jonathan Almeida and I worked on-site as post-9/11 AML consultants at commercial banks in New York City. We know firsthand what it means to financial institutions to be awash in regulatory requirements in high-stakes Compliance and Governance contexts. When we formed AML Partners, we did so with the express intent to make AML Compliance and governance software that was better, faster, and more efficient—software that worked the way institutions needed it to work. And that didn’t bust their bottom line.
Innovation: Analytics drive accuracy, efficiency on RegTech platform
RegTech platform technology leads peak innovation at AML Partners in 2020. Our regtech platform leverages the API economy and the extraordinary power of analytics. With our RegTech OneTM platform, AML Partners seeks to move clients closer and closer to automated Customer Due Diligence (KYC/CDD) with machine learning for suspicious activity.
This advance is crucial. Here’s why: Current U.S. law requires institutions to monitor the expected behavior of their customers. It doesn’t say to look for specific instances of crime. Rule-based monitoring, a central feature of legacy transaction-monitoring systems, only looks for specific instances of crime.
With RegTech One, AML Partners leverages analytics—hindsight, predictive, and insight analytics–for true behavior monitoring. With peering analytics (i.e. peer comparisons) statistically controlled for variables like size, institutions can now monitor precisely for the expected behaviors of their customers. Hindsight analytics determines the range of expected behavior based on past behavior. And predictive analytics tells you what the behavior should be going forward. Finally, insight analytics finds the crime.
By using those three types of analytics, any variances by risk will reveal unexpected behavior and probable suspicious activity. By using this workstream, institutions can finally eliminate efficiency-destroying false positives. And institutions will be able to customize analytics according to categories central to their risk. These could include entity type, industry type, products, geography, etc. Institutions can then use the data inputs leveraged for insight and predictive analytics to automatically create a stored data-based risk assessment for each customer.
AML Partners’ development shop built the RegTech One platform to accommodate both the rule-based system currently in vogue and the analytics system we expect to eventually replace rules.
And equally importantly, we designed RegTech One to be a Risk-enabled platform–a modular system where users add best-of-breed tools into the workstream in days and weeks instead of months and years.
This modular platform for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) completely eliminates the “lift and shift” of legacy systems. By using the API set, systems integrate into the RegTech One sphere of influence. This creates for each institution their own Network of Applications and Ecosystem of Permissioned Data. This also better facilitates gradual planned turnover of legacy systems: Institutions may extend their legacy systems by adding additional workstreams to enhance the capability of legacy systems until they can be replaced one by one.
And because RegTech One is zero code for workstream creation, once data integration is done, technical debt begins to fall quickly. This allows institutions to be completely proactive in behavioral monitoring—instead of being reactive in a rule-only based system.
CapGemini ScaleUp & Financial NewTech Watchlist 2020
In addition to RegTech 100 recognition in 2020, AML Partners also completed CapGemini’s ScaleUp analysis. And early this year, we learned that AML Partners achieved an Advanced Level qualification in CapGemini’s ScaleUp program.
CapGemini, in its effort to identify top solutions, analyzes various factors: “An Advanced ScaleUp implies that [a ScaleUp candidate] has received an excellent score across all the four pillars (People, Finance, Business and Technology). The ScaleUp has demonstrated high potential for innovation, revenue generation and sustainable business growth throughout all the steps of the Capgemini ScaleUp Qualification process. This ScaleUp is among the most qualified candidates for successful collaboration with large corporate entities,” according to CapGemini’s ScaleUp Qualification.
We also received other good news about our tech solutions in the marketplace.In May, AML Partners achieved a place on the Financial NewTech Watchlist for 2020. The 2020 NewTech Watchlist is a list curated by FinTechVisor, a joint effort of CapGemini and Efma.
The Financial NewTech Challenge seeks to identify innovative new financial technologies that have the potential to reshape the financial services landscape in 2020. AML Partners’ listing on the NewTech Watchlist delivers another great sign that we are on point with innovation in RegTech.
We deeply appreciate these recognitions, particularly because these organizations place high value on innovation that will help financial institutions succeed with their compliance and governance initiatives. We love that challenge: What in technology can make this crucial work of governance, risk, and compliance better, more accurate, and more efficient? That question drives our work every day.
Comply and carry on–Working through Covid-19
I couldn’t reflect on 2020 at the midpoint without acknowledging the toll wrought by Covid-19. We at AML Partners have worked hard to comply ourselves—with stay-at-home orders, social distancing, and further embracing video conferencing and online product demonstrations and support.
We enacted our Covid contingency plan in mid-March by directing all our team members to work from home. We have been so grateful to our development teams and sales team for their work on behalf of the company and our valued clients. We also have been deeply grateful to our customers and strategic partners for joining us in finding ways to move the work forward in these difficult times. AML Partners remains committed to staying the course with health and safety protocols for Covid-19.
As 2020 rolls on, we will continue to manage and support and innovate amidst this gritty new reality. And we will continue to strive to be part of the solution through innovation in RegTech and governance, risk, and compliance.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance: Nail it every time with RegTech software platform for AML, GRC
With AML Partners’ platform technology for RegTech, updating and upgrading your AML and eGRC software solutions is easier, faster, and much less expensive. Contact us today to explore how platform technology and our end-to-end AML Ecosystem powered by the RegTechONE platform–can transform the efficiency and effectiveness of your unique AML Compliance efforts. RegTechONE software for AML Compliance includes fully integrated modules for CDD KYC software for on-boarding, behavior and transaction monitoring software, and sanctions screening software for comprehensive AML screening. And AML Partners simplifies your end-to-end fully integrated AML Compliance efforts even further with an optional Subpoena Search module for FinCEN 314a and similar subpoena searches. Contact us today to learn about our proof-of-concept option or schedule a demo of RegTechONE, the AML software ecosystem. With extraordinary configurability and built for API extensibility, the RegTechONE AML software platformpowers not only an end-to-end AML software solution but also vendor management, AML client lifecycle management, eKYC Golden Records, Perpetual KYC, and so much more.
