GRACE For Anti-Money Laundering

Easy AML client life cycle management and risk profiling to prevent money laundering

Financial Crime and Money Laundering have increased drastically. Help your Compliance Team manage AML obligations with GRACE AML Life cycle management system

Financial Crime and Money Laundering have become one of the key risks in the world. Geo political situations, Cryptocurrency failures, Cybersecurity Ransomware money, drug money laundering add to the challenges financial firm everywhere face in ensuring their organizations dont become conduit to illegal practices. A comprehensive oversight over AML practices across the life cycle of each client has become a necessity.

GRACE AML Life cycle management system starts with prospecting and validating the client against worldwide sanctions list, pep lists and OFAC lists and beneficiary ownerships in sanctioned entities and countries and redflagging them. As they become clients, comprehensive data collection for KYC (Know Your Client),CDD (Customer Due Diligence) and validations can ensure issues and red flags are seen and recorded. Transactions and money movements conducted by the customer can give knowledge of illegal transactions. Issue identification and Suspicious activity reporting are mandated where seen. A Client Risk Profile on each client can help the organization keep track of high risk clients. Periodic risk assessments also help keep track of new behavior that need to verified for red-flags if any

Please contact us to see our easy to use GRACE Automated AML monitoring system
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What is 'Anti Money Laundering’ (AML)

Financial institutions are mandated by the BSA AML (Banking Security Act Anti Money Laundering Act) and the CDD Customer Due Diligence, AML 2020 provisions to establish AML Compliance procedures.

Financial institutions need to have process in place to verify and stop money moving through their systems from money laundering activities. All client accounts require comprehensive due diligence to verify their source of funds and over subsequent money movement activities.

The KYC (Know Your customer) process should verify each client against International Sanctions Lists, OFAC (Office of Financial Asset Controls) , PEP Lists of (Politically Exposed Persons), Beneficiary Ownership in Sanctioned Entities and Sanctioned Countries. They should also be checked for Adverse Media reports against them.

Money transfer transactions should be monitored to identify trends that point to money laundering. Suspicious activities need to be reported to FINCEN through the SAR (Suspicious Activity Report)

Huge Fines and Punishments face organizations that are found guilty of failing to verify money laundering.

The Challenges faced by AML Compliance Teams

The AML compliance team need to establish the Policies and Procedures for the staff to use in their verification process based on the business complexities in identifying AML violations

Background verification against terrorist and sanctions watchlists for new prospects and clients. The CDD – Beneficiary Ownership rule requires verification of ownership of the client in sanctioned entities. Manually keeping track of each client for AML is a daunting task. Keeping the verified information on each client in paper and PDF formats does not allow for ongoing verification. Compliance staff can be over whelmed with the amount of verification involved and may miss trends that may be easily noticeable if they had a system in place.

Conducting risk assessments of the business entities on a regular basis need to be done all branches, IT systems, customer facing staff and other members involved in AML processes are needed to ensure everyone is following the defined processes.

AML Information base on each client and their activities as well as their transactions, issues, prior SAR (Suspicious Activity Reports) are needed for reference and regulators are looking for comprehensive AML checks during their examinations

AML Fines are on the rise, world over in big and small financial institutions.

GRACE Can help you Automate your AML Monitoring

GRACE AML helps you establish the processes of managing your client information verification against sanctions and terrorist watch lists in an automated way. Along with transaction monitoring, this will help you ensure that all clients are monitored for suspicious activities and brought to the attention of the regulators through Suspicious Activity Reporting.

Automated API based connectivity to Sanction and Watchlist sources like World Check and Dow Jones, can help bring the information directly into the system to include Pep, beneficiary ownership and adverse media and automatically red flag case where issue exists

KYC, CDD and Account Opening checklists can be set up flexibly on the system to gather data that is need based on the client profile and shared with clients and staff for data gathering. It also includes online signature and document sharing capabilities

Transactions from various source systems can be automatically brought to GRACE as a scheduled activity and automated red flagging of transactions can be done based on business rules and brought to compliance for their reviews.

Automatic risk profiling of clients based on risk assessments and transactions monitoring can be done to identify high risk customers and corrective action undertaken.

Policies and Procedures maintained for AML can be sent for periodic attestations. Periodic Online Training can also be done. Risk assessments of various business entities and their AML process and risks and issues found there can be mitigated

Suspicious Activity Reports can be created where needed and issues can be tracked for issues management and closure

GRACE AML Monitoring Modules

Organized, Efficient Anti-Money Laundering Monitoring

Manage AML Policies and Procedures

  • GRACE can help you define and manage the Policies and Procedures for Anti-Money Laundering for all the lines of Businesses of the organization.
  • Manage detailed reviews and comments by all related departments including legal, compliance, client management and other groups

My Portal for all Staff

  • The My Portal function allows staff to see the queue of their activities and report on these requests, be it for AML verification, or training, or attestation.

Conduct Online Attestations

  • GRACE can help you ensure that all staff are sent the latest policy / procedures for them to read and attest online. This ensures that the latest procedures for checking AML are well understood by staff. Periodic attestation can help staff be reminded of the correct procedures for AML Verification
  • GRACE can set up Attestation templates, as well as Attestation calendars for the staff / groups of staff can be included. Emails can be received to alert them about the attestation. and reminders can be sent. Attestation dashboard will allow the organization to see how many people are pending attestation and ensure all of them go thru the attestation process.

Conduct Online Training

  • GRACE can help you set up the Training calendar for all of the staff to be trained periodically on the processes.
  • Set up customized AML training based on your own business needs and processes
  • Allow staff to be intimated about the training and take in online.
  • Gather data about the status of their understanding and on their training to verify their understanding.
  • Have a Training dashboard that can help identify staff members and their status of training

Conduct Transaction Monitoring

  • GRACE can automate the process of data load of transactional information for clients like funds transfers, Automated Clearing (ACH) wires on the system through APIs or file transfer mechanisms or excel / CSV file loads.
  • GRACE can monitor transactions to see suspicious trends based on rules to red flag them to the suspicious list. Accounts to which money is being transferred could be flagged if they are sent to a Sanctioned Entity. Transactions that show patterns of suspicious activity can also be included into the Suspicious activity report for FINCEN

Client Risk Dashboard

  • The Client Risk dashboard can help you take identify high risk profiles based on their risk scores from Sanctions Monitoring activity. It can help you drill into their status of violations, their transactions and the patterns.
  • The dashboard can provide information on the status of AML monitoring queues and workloads of staff.
  • The dashboard can help you identify high risk branches, processes and client groups to help you improve the process. It can also show you the status of training, attestation to ensure you are able to improve compliance

Conduct AML Risk Assessments

  • AML Risk assessments are a big component of AML Monitoring . GRACE helps you can set up and use standardized checklists for periodic risk assessments across departments, business functions, lines of business, branches and locations
  • You can set up Calendars for assessments and receive alerts on due dates. You can send out Online Risk Assessment Questionnaires to collect information. You can also physically conduct the assessments, record findings and risks. By classifying it in a standardized way, you can quickly identify the areas of risks across the organization, and manage mitigation
  • Findings from Risk Assessments could also refine policies and procedures and lead to enhanced training, re-attestation and other processes as mitigation.
  • Staff that is assigned to assessment or mitigation tasks can be alerted and can report online on the system on status of tasks
  • The Risk assessment dashboard can help track status of assessments, findings and mitigation task status

Manage Automated Client AML Verification

  • GRACE helps you manage client Information including residences, jurisdictions, legal entities, dependents, relations etc to track AML across customer entity. Client information can also be imported from source systems / loaded from excel to be brought into GRACE. Clients can be assigned to Staff for monitoring.
  • Automated AML monitoring and, risk flagging can be initiated at the click of a button to pull information on these entities from industry respected sources into GRACE for clients existence in worldwide PEP (Politically Exposed Person) list, sanctions lists, watch lists with automated red flagging along with beneficiary ownership and Adverse Media information. All red-flagged information will be brought to the compliance officers attention. Compliance officers can also manually red-flag / mark false positive on the information. The client’s risk profile can be update based on the information. Information changes will also be audit trailed. Clients will also be monitored on a batch mode to identify any new risks seen with the client that warrant a SAR (Suspicious Activity Reporting)

Issue and Case Management

  • Issues and Case Management is inherent part of the GRACE workflow management. Clients at Risk can be added to issues which could need additional investigation to confirm their high risk status or be included into a SAR (Suspicious Activity Report).
  • Issues can be assigned to staff, they can add in notes, escalate for review and close issues. Task management reminders can be sent out.
  • Issue Dashboard can give senior management the view on all issues and their status of mitigation as well as patterns in issues.

The Great Value You Get from Using GRACE AML

Organized, Efficient Anti-Money Laundering Monitoring

Manage AML Comprehensively

Helps you have an integrated system for handling all AML requirements and a single repository of information for all queries, examinations and audits

Client Classification and Management of Risk becomes easy

With an integrated web based access anytime anywhere, client information classification and risk grading them becomes simple.

Reduces Manual Labor and Errors

Relieves compliance staff of many manual hours of labor to search for information on the client against various sanctions list

Regulatory examinations can be handled with confidence

With a visible and streamlined process for AML,it is very easy to prove and show your process to regulators

Ensures Violations are Caught Early

Ensures all violations are caught through the automated process and red-flagged in an easy to identify manner to avoid the needle in the haystack problem

Organization Ownership of Data

Organizations suffer when key risk and compliance staff leaves. The information is scattered if maintained solely by individuals and are lying on disks in various forms. GRACE becomes the single central repository of documents, data and processes enabling continuity even when key people leave the organization

Monitor for Risks even when you are not looking

Be able to know new information available in the sanctions list or adverse media even when they are not looking for it.

Have a Consistent Process

Ensures the staff have a consistent process which can be followed at all times.

Easy to Integrate and Customize

GRACE offers easy integration with organizational source systems to bring in funds transfer and other data at low costs. AML Monitoring can be done through a single system and the red-flagging using business rules during the data load process allows AML officers to focus on compliance instead of data gathering

Monitor Suspicious Activity in an organized way

Monitors High Risk Clients and manages SAR(Suspicious Activity reporting) in an organized way

Easy to Integrate and Customize

GRACE offers easy integration with organizational source systems to enhance the functionality and extend it at low costs. This is a great benefit for end users who can bring in all the relevant data into a single system through automated process allowing them to focus on risk management and compliance instead of data gathering

Conduct Periodic Risk Assessments to Improve Process

Manages risk assessments and identifies loop holes in the process

Enormous Cost Savings

Enormous costs savings in unwanted labor in keeping track of AML, avoid regulatory fines, legal costs, reputation risks and empowers the organization in managing risks.

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Annual Eversheds Sutherland Analysis of FINRA Disciplinary Actions Shows Huge Surge in Financial Sanctions

All information Quoted from the article https://us.eversheds-sutherland.com/NewsCommentary/Press-Releases/249220/Annual-Eversheds-Sutherland-Analysis-of-FINRA-Disciplinary-Actions-Shows-Huge-Surge-in-Financial-Sanctions?utm_source=vuture&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=vuture-emails March 8, 2022 Eversheds Sutherland has completed its annual study of the disciplinary actions reported...