Have you ever marveled at a three-year-old playing with an iPad? They have no fear; as digital natives, they will live their lives never knowing a world before all-the-time digital technology. For the rest of us, taking the plunge on new tech can feel risky. And that certainly appears to be the case with a lot of Chief Compliance Officers—even though terrific software solutions for end-to-end AML Compliance are ready today.
According to Compliance Week and Deloitte, their 2015 In Focus survey shows that 68 percent of CCOs lack full confidence in the capacity of their IT systems to deliver effective results. Moreover, a majority of CCOs report using desktop software or internally produced coding that struggles to pull together chunks of data from disparate sources in the institution.
Not surprisingly, this can result in patchwork systems that are touchy, rigid, lumbering, and challenging to explain during regulatory examinations. And it can also make CCOs feel like AML Compliance tech is more work than it’s worth. But in 2015 that is just not the case.
AML Partners’ CEO Frank Cummings has worked in software development and business IT processes for 30 years, and he has been in the field of AML Compliance for nearly 15 years. He has a lot of empathy for CCOs who get stuck with impossibly clunky legacy systems that lumber along and with IT staff who resist change.
An Amazing Time for AML Software Solutions
“Tech-wise, this is an amazing time to be a CCO in the field of AML Compliance,” Cummings said. “But that message doesn’t always make it to Compliance Officers who are surrounded by overwhelmed IT staff who want to stick with what they know—even if it doesn’t work very well. And it feels risky to take that plunge into new tech territory when you’re the one who takes center stage with examiners. But truly, our AML software solutions—end-to-end—will blow you away.”
Cummings describes the AML-tech approach of AML Partners as one that focuses on the paired foundations of efficiency and effectiveness—“you get great Compliance results without blowing up your budget and your human resources. It’s about working smarter with the right tools found in a well integrated system.”
Tech for Efficient, Effective, Comprehensive AML Compliance
Cummings uses his flagship product SURETY-CDD® as an example. SURETY-CDD® is an AML on-boarding solution for customer due diligence (Know Your Customer) that both standardizes and customizes your data collection, that provides in-application risk modeling and risk assessment, that provides integration with subscription data services for auto-filling data fields, that provides automated screening of sanctions and negative news, that provides a “Comply-on-the-Fly” question-management system, and that tracks all changes by each user.
“It’s a data powerhouse that accommodates both an overall standardization of your CDD on-boarding as well as in-house customization based on your risk requirements. And we systematically engineer feature after feature to make this product secure, efficient, comprehensive, and effective. This is CDD on-boarding for the risks and the requirements of 21st Century financial institutions,” Cummings said.
2015–The Year for CCOs to Embrace IT for AML Compliance
Cummings encourages reluctant CCOs to step outside their institution’s IT norm and to sample some of the AML software solutions on the market, including his. “We have an amazing product—it’s the solution we designed based on years of onsite time with Compliance Officers. This is the antidote to that reluctance to embrace AML IT, and it’s more important than ever given the regulatory environment, the high stakes of Compliance, and the prevalence of terrorists and criminals trying to enter your financial institution.”
