All major financial institutions need to make sure they pursue only the best standards of financial security. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that HSBC may be in need of some better anti money laundering measures.
As the source describes, HSBC has received reports from a compliance monitor named Michael Cherkaksy on the improvements that the company might need to make in order to crack down on the potential for this crime and reach its goals, even though it has already improved in some ways.
According to an excerpt from Cherkaksy's letter that the source quotes, the current means of policing fraud within its system is too diffuse to make any real headway in this area, and HSBC's current "transaction monitoring systems lack integration, coordination, and standardization," as a filing from the Justice Department said.
But according to Bloomberg, the same filing also features comments to the positive regarding HSBC's improvement and the means by which it might continue strengthening its anti-money laundering detection.
"The monitor believes that the leadership of HSBC Group is appropriately committed to addressing the bank's longstanding compliance deficiencies," the filing read. "HSBC Group has made significant progress under the current management team."
According to official IRS statistics, there were nearly 1600 money laundering investigations started last year, and nearly 830 sentences in the Fiscal Year of 2013, with an incarceration rate of more than 85 percent.
There were also 922 newly initiated investigations related to the Bank Secrecy Act, all of which should have banks thinking seriously about proper financial performance.
It's possible that with this increased focus on proper practices, HSBC will be able to work toward more improvement and shed some of the concerns that this filing may be raising about the company's stability.
