Sep ’13 – Nov ’13 Issue

Issue 12.4

Issue: Vol. 12 No. 4

Featured

How risky is your risk assessment?

How risky is your risk assessment?

I would like to begin by asking readers to conduct a brief visualization exercise. Read the following and then close your eyes and think of the first thing that comes to mind. Risk Assessment. For most, I am guessing the two...

A deep dive into country risk assessment

A deep dive into country risk assessment

Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) and sanctions compliance risk assessments are an ongoing challenge to many financial institutions, regardless of their size or scale of operations. When...

From the Executive Vice President
Honoring Law Enforcement

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I just returned from my college reunion (no, I won't say which year) and it is at times like these that I am reminded how fortunate we all are to be in the...

From the Editor
From the Editor

From the Editor

Risk — A four-letter word that we deal with daily. Assessing risk is part of everyone's life, whether it is during your commute to work passing the slow car...

Inside this Edition
ACAMS Risk Assessment: An in-depth look

ACAMS Risk Assessment: An in-depth look

This past year has been one of the most truly innovative and customer focused, product development years at ACAMS. In addition to the advanced certification programs, and the...

Mexico's Security Threat: Organized Crime and Money Laundering

Mexico's Security Threat: Organized Crime and Money Laundering

Mexico is seen as one of Latin America's most promising countries with ambitions to become a regional economic leader. According to a Germany Trade & Investment (GTAI) report published by...


Canada 2013: The Fight Against Financial Crime Continues

Canada 2013: The Fight Against Financial Crime Continues

The Appropriate Balance Between the Sharing of Information and the Protection of Personal Information It has been a couple of years since I wrote on the landscape in Canada. Over the last...

Redefining due diligence: A paradigm shift for AML/BSA compliance

Redefining due diligence: A paradigm shift for AML/BSA compliance

Money laundering, terrorist financing and fraud pose an increasing threat to the integrity of the world's financial systems. The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970, sometimes referred to as the...


Fraud Analytics: Strategies and methods for detection and prevention

Fraud Analytics: Strategies and methods for detection and prevention

Looking for less theory and more hands-on methods for finding and flinging fraud from your business? Packed with countless software options and helpful tools, fraud analytics is the...


Courage in Compliance

Courage in Compliance

This is the true and compelling real-life story of a Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and bank compliance officer. She had been recently hired by a small community bank. Shortly into her tenure at the bank, she...


A Bitcoin further down the road

A Bitcoin further down the road

The world of virtual currencies has been changing at Internet speed over the last six months, since ACAMS Today published an article about Bitcoin and the implications for anti-money...

The case for centralized KYC

The case for centralized KYC

As the cost of addressing new regulations eats away at profit margins and regulators impose record fines, financial institutions (FIs) are actively seeking new solutions to reduce costs whilst...


集中式客户身份识别的案例

集中式客户身份识别的案例

由于应对新规章的成本会侵蚀边际利润，而违反新规又会招致监管机构的重罚，因此金融机构纷纷积极寻求根本性的解决方案，以降低成本，同时又提高合规标准。在过去的数十年间，许多金融...

Congratulations to the Greater Twin Cities Chapter! The 2013 Chapter of the Year Award recipient

Congratulations to the Greater Twin Cities Chapter! The 2013 Chapter of the Year Award recipient

The ACAMS Greater Twin Cities Chapter was launched on October 27, 2011, by an executive board composed of professionals from the AML field in the Minnesota/Wisconsin...

Raise your voices: We hear you

Raise your voices: We hear you

As a prosecutor leading a multi-jurisdictional suspicious activity report (SAR) review team in Central Virginia, I regularly read hundreds of SARs at a time. Our team reviews every SAR...


Old MacDonald of sanctions compliance and customer due diligence

Old MacDonald of sanctions compliance and customer due diligence

If you are keeping score, it seems that sanctions compliance is a bit like the old nursery rhyme Old MacDonald Had a Farm. You know, "here a sanction, there a sanction, everywhere a sanction...

Kenneth Rijock: Author of The Laundry Man

Kenneth Rijock: Author of The Laundry Man

Rob Goldfinger had the opportunity to speak with Miami financial crime consultant Kenneth Rijock, whose first-person story, The Laundry Man details his decade as a career money launderer...


Dennis Lormel, CAMS: Assessing the Convergence Between Transnational Criminal Organizations and Terrorist Groups

Dennis Lormel, CAMS: Assessing the Convergence Between Transnational Criminal Organizations and Terrorist Groups

ACAMS Today spoke with Dennis M. Lormel the founder and president of DML Associates, LLC about the convergence of transnational criminal organizations and terrorists. Lormel...

Ted Weissberg, CAMS – Chief Executive Officer

Ted Weissberg, CAMS – Chief Executive Officer

Prior to joining ACAMS in 2009, Weissberg was president of the Information and Training unit of Fortent, Inc. and spent 15 years at Thomson Financial in various editorial, publishing and general...

Sylvain Perreault, CAMS – Montreal, Canada

Sylvain Perreault, CAMS – Montreal, Canada

Sylvain Perreault is currently the chief compliance officer of Desjardins Group, the largest financial cooperative group in Canada with $200 billion of assets under management...


Rosalind Laruccia, CAMS, LLB – Toronto, Canada

Rosalind Laruccia, CAMS, LLB – Toronto, Canada

Rosalind Laruccia is a senior manager with RBC Global AML Compliance, managing the Global Sanctions Group. She has 13 years of experience in risk management, internal audit, AML...


Reindorf Atta Gyamena, CAMS – Accra, Ghana

Reindorf Atta Gyamena, CAMS – Accra, Ghana

Reindorf Gyamena has over eight years of experience in the financial services industry. He is currently the head of compliance at CAL Bank Ltd where he oversees the bank's entire compliance...


Carolina Ceballos, CAMS – Paris, France

Carolina Ceballos, CAMS – Paris, France

Carolina Ceballos has more than six years of experience in the banking and insurance industry as a compliance and money laundering expert. She holds a master's degree in business law...


Samah Fadhil Sukkar – Amman, Jordan

Samah Fadhil Sukkar – Amman, Jordan

Samah Fadhil Sukkar is the head of compliance of Alrowad Exchange and has been with the company for six years. Alrowad Exchange is one of the leading companies to intermediate...

Partners in anti-crime – Law enforcement outreach enhances BSA/AML programs

Partners in anti-crime – Law enforcement outreach enhances BSA/AML programs

In the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance community there is often a lot of discussion about creating better partnerships with law enforcement. While some organizations make this a...


Negative News – Discovering and verifying entity due diligence information

Negative News – Discovering and verifying entity due diligence information

Compiling negative news information about entities is a dynamic process. Assembling static entity information like name, date of birth and tax numbers is only the first step in entity identity and...


How risky is your risk assessment?

How risky is your risk assessment?

I would like to begin by asking readers to conduct a brief visualization exercise. Read the following and then close your eyes and think of the first thing that comes to mind. Risk Assessment...


A deep dive into country risk assessment

A deep dive into country risk assessment

Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) and sanctions compliance risk assessments are an ongoing challenge to many financial institutions, regardless of their size or scale of...