The Covid-19 pandemic has caused untold misery around the world leading to huge human and financial losses. It has also stimulated a rise in financial crimes with criminals becoming smarter than ever before. This has made it necessary for businesses to adopt proactive measures aimed at mitigating risks and combating crime.
ARCTIC Intelligence, a market leader in the Regulatory Technology (RegTech) sector, recently announced that African Bank Limited will be implementing AML Accelerate, one of its AML solutions, in the fight against financial crimes.
ARCTIC, a company based in Sydney Australia, has created digital solutions in risk assessment, audit, and assurance specifically targeted at financial crime risk and compliance issues. These solutions are aimed at assisting regulated bodies in the management of their compliance obligations.
According to Lawrence Muravha, Group Head of Financial Crime Department at African Bank; “ABL significant time researching a software or solution that will enable digital and seamless completion of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) risk assessments. We found the use of spreadsheets and other manual methodologies as not efficient way to conduct risk assessments mainly due to a failure in keeping clear record of evidence of processes and results. Furthermore, it also not always simple to explain as to how one arrived at the final outcome of the assessments and provided for more room of individual judgement to be made by Compliance Officers,”
ARCTIC intelligence has hundreds of clients in more than ten countries, across 12 jurisdictions and African Bank has just become its latest client. Established in 1993, African Bank has deemed it necessary to revisit its AML/CTF – anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism practices, thereby acting proactively ahead of the 2020 review by South African regulators while also keeping in line with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). African Bank is dedicated to the creation of relevant financial products such as loans, insurance, and investment instruments aimed at improving the lives of South Africans.
Muravha goes on to say; “While in the process of refreshing our annual AML risk assessments, ABL subsequently, identified Arctic Intelligence or AML Accelerate tool as the solution that meet our predefined requirements for being aligned with industry best practices, international standards and enable conducting of end to end AML risk assessment, capturing of data, electronic record keeping, version control and visualisation of outcomes or reports.”
AML Accelerate, a cloud-based counter-terrorism financing and risk assessment platform, seeks to reduce the amount of time and resources dedicated to AML compliance. Apart from being 100% hosted in a secure cloud with support from AML risk experts, it features a complete audit trail of the overall AML risk management process, action and issue tracking that aids improvement, country-specific AML program templates based on local AML laws, and a lot more.
