Former crypto chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried's guilty verdict stemming from the FTX fraud and collapse already seems like old news in a period of serious enforcement action related to crypto scams and industry misconduct. This tenth episode of season nine brings together Helen Chan, regulatory intelligence expert in Hong Kong and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in the UK to unpack themes emerging from recent initiatives from Chinese law enforcement, Europol, and U.S. regulators as well as the D...
Nov 30, 2023•34 min
This episode features a special guest Michelle Giddings, head of anti-money laundering at the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Giddings joins Rachel Wolcott, senior editor at Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence in London. TRRI usually covers anti-money laundering (AML) strictly from a financial services viewpoint. However, with the focus on accountants' and law firms' role in preventing financial crime like money laundering and sanctions evasion since the adv...
Nov 23, 2023•44 min
This episode of Compliance Clarified brings together Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London and Brett Wolf, senior anti-money laundering editor for the Americas to discuss Hamas, terrorist financing and the U.S. response to the 7 October attack. It has been a little over a month since Hamas fighters launched a brutal attack on Israel, unleashing a war, and leaving thousands of civilians dead. The attack took Israel and the world by surprise and raised questions about whether enough attention is...
Nov 16, 2023•28 min
Singaporean police conducted a nationwide raid (http://go-ri.tr.com/7Nm3aO) and arrested 10 ethnic-Chinese businessmen on Aug. 15. The police seized more than S$2.8 billion, making it one of the world's biggest money laundering cases (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/assets-seized-singapore-money-laundering-case-now-2-bln-minister-2023-10-03/). In this episode, Nathan Lynch, Asia managing editor, and Yixiang Zeng, reporter in Singapore, discuss how the case began back in 2021 when the ...
Nov 09, 2023•15 min
Whistleblower cases have re-emerged in a growing share of enforcement actions brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal have emphasized the need to protect individuals who report misconduct. Last week, Grewal said, "The SEC's whistleblower program is a critical part of our enforcement efforts. Each year we receive thousands of whistleblower tips, and throughout the history of the program, those tips have resulted i...
Nov 02, 2023•17 min
Australian financial institutions and their senior executives are preparing for a new Financial Accountability Regime, which will bring in a UK-style framework for senior management accountability. Under the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR), institutions will need to establish an accountability map for their directors and senior executives along with an array of conduct and compliance obligations. The object of the FAR is to impose a tougher accountability framework for the banking, insuran...
Oct 26, 2023•19 min
The Financial Conduct Authority mistakenly told a whistleblower they were "no longer entitled to the protections offered under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998," (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/23/contents) after it gave permission for their name to be disclosed to their former employer. The mistake went uncorrected for six months and was overlooked by the Complaints Commissioner in August. In this episode, Alexander Robson and Lindsey Rogerson discuss the regulator's apology a...
Oct 19, 2023•19 min
This episode of Compliance Clarified brings together Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence's regulatory expert in Hong Kong and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London to discuss what closer ties between North Korea and Russia mean for sanctions and compliance officials. Helen and Rachel delve into the growing entanglement between secondary sanctions risk and cryptocurrencies. Crypto exchanges and services—Tornado Cash, Bitzlato-- have been sanctioned or closed for helping sanctioned entities laun...
Oct 12, 2023•30 min
Compliance Clarified's second episode of season 9 brings together Rachel Wolcott, senior editor and Brett Wolf, senior anti-money laundering editor for the Americas to discuss the state of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FINCEN) beneficial ownership register. The register has been years in the making as the United States has slowly come around to implementing the Financial Action Taskforce's (FATF) recommendations 24 and 25. Those address transparency and beneficial ownership of lega...
Oct 05, 2023•26 min
Compliance Clarified's first episode of season 9 brings together Alexander Robson, managing editor, Helen Parry, senior regulatory expert and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor to discuss the state of UK Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) enforcement and markets oversight division. Does it have "all bases covered" as Therese Chambers, its new co-executive director for enforcement said in a speech? Or is its approach and execution of enforcement cases, to use the words of an Upper Tribunal judge, "hi...
Sep 28, 2023•29 min
In episode 10 of season 8 of Compliance Clarified, Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence's Hong Kong-based expert and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London discuss artificial intelligence in compliance. To say there has been a lot of hype around AI and generative AI is an understatement. ChatGPT, in particular, has captured the public's imagination. It is simultaneously hailed as transformational technology and a weapon of mass destruction. So what's in it for compliance officers? Helen and Rach...
Jul 20, 2023•33 min
The Financial Conduct Authority's much-trumpeted Consumer Duty comes into effect on July 31. An amendment to the Financial Services Act in 2021 in the House of Lords gave the regulator a year to bring in rules concerning the level of care firms provide to consumers. This turned into the Consumer Duty and last July the FCA set out its rules. The FCA has issued an unprecedented set of guidance on the duty. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, managing editor Alex Robson talks to senior editor ...
Jul 13, 2023•21 min
The Australian arm of consulting firm PwC is embroiled in an unprecedented political scandal following revelations that senior staff sold confidential information on government tax reforms to its multinational clients. PwC is defending allegations that it engaged in a deliberate multi-year strategy to cover up a breach of confidentiality in the tax leak scandal. The form stands accused of "monetising" confidential information that it obtained as a consultant to the government on laws to target m...
Jul 06, 2023•15 min
U.S. banking regulators are homing in on more effective stress testing after admitting they were behind the curve in their supervision of Silicon Valley Bank. The bank collapsed in March, alongside Signature Bank, and was later joined by First Republic. Further problems are expected for smaller, regional banks, but regulators have to date seen off fears about a 2008-style financial crisis. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, Alex Robson, managing editor in London, is joined by Henry Engler,...
Jun 29, 2023•17 min
Financial institutions in the United States are filing an exceptionally high volume of suspicious activity reports (SARs), with more than 3.6 million SARs submitted in 2022, a 57% increase over pre-pandemic (2019) levels. Additionally, suspicious activity reporting is on pace to set another annual record in 2023. A special report published recently by Thomson Reuters takes a deeper dive into the data offering valuable insight into critical areas of financial crime. A link to the report is availa...
Jun 22, 2023•23 min
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says it views whistleblowers as a valuable source of intelligence. But whistleblowers feel far from valued by the FCA, according to the findings of the regulator's own survey. In 2019, the FCA board commissioned a review of its whistle-blowing offering, which was delayed by the pandemic and published in May this year. The self-assessment found whistleblowers were dissatisfied with the FCA's offering. In response it has set out some changes it is going to ...
Jun 15, 2023•25 min
Firms need to re-engineer their anti-money laundering (AML) systems and controls to refocus on know-your-customer (KYC) processes to prevent the inevitable pile-up of transaction monitoring alerts. Firms' pivot to digital onboarding has prioritised speed over collecting enough information to determine whether transactions are suspicious. It has created an inefficient, expensive process where AML analysts are sifting through thousands of alerts looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The...
Jun 08, 2023•22 min
Financial services firms in the Asia-Pacific region have been shocked out of their complacency in the past year, with scams, frauds and other cyber-related crimes increasing exponentially. In Australia alone, consumers reported a record A$3 billion in losses last year — up from A$850m just two years earlier. The rapid pivot to digital financial services and non-face-to-face business during the pandemic has been cited as a major driver for this trend. The economic turmoil in developing economies ...
Jun 01, 2023•11 min
Compliance officers are operating with limited sets of resources while simultaneously managing a diverse and expanding range of subject areas where the volume of regulatory change is expected to increase. The 14th annual Cost of Compliance, published by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence, found costs are expected to increase with difficulties recruiting appropriately skilled staff also reported. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, managing editor, Alex Robson, is joined by Mike Cowan, ...
May 25, 2023•15 min
Anti-money laundering (AML) control failings at Santander Bank UK opened the door to a financial intermediary with links to Colombian drug cartels operating in Britain. Beltcastle, a payments service provider, is "Customer A" featured in the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) final notice in December 2022 to illustrate the failures behind Santander's £107 million fine. Beltcastle, which was authorised by the UK regulator for eight years, put about £1.3 billion in cash through the UK Post Office...
May 18, 2023•14 min
The triggering of a complete write-down of the nominal value of all Credit Suisse AT1 debt has come as a shock to some investors. Regulators took what some saw as an irregular move to write down 16 billion Swiss francs of Credit Suisse bonds, known as Additional Tier 1 or AT1 debt, to zero, during UBS's rescue of Credit Suisse on the weekend of March 18/19. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, Alexander Robson, managing editor of Regulatory Intelligence in London, is joined by Helen Parry, s...
Mar 30, 2023•12 min
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sent shockwaves through the venture capital and technology industries. It has had uncomfortable echoes of the 2008 financial crisis with regulators and other policymakers working through the weekend to engineer solutions to avoid further contagion and possible systemic risk. And that was the weekend of 11/12 March; this weekend just gone, regulators and policymakers were busy with the shotgun wedding of UBS and Credit Suisse. In the UK, HSBC has bought SVB and...
Mar 23, 2023•23 min
The world's largest primary bullion producer, Australia's Perth Mint, has found itself at the centre of one of the country's biggest risk and compliance failures following a six-month investigation led by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence. The government-owned entity has found itself defending regulatory spot fires on a range of fronts. These include a major money laundering audit, answering parliamentary questions about sub-standard gold deliveries to Shanghai, defending a failure to regi...
Mar 16, 2023•13 min
This special episode of Compliance Clarified was recorded for International Women’s Day. Rachel Wolcott and Lindsey Rogerson, both senior editors at Regulatory Intelligence in London, are joined by Dr Louise Ashley of Queen Mary University’s London School of Business and Management and Centre for Research on Equality and Diversity. Louise has spent a decade researching social inclusion in the City of London. Her book Highly Discriminating: Why the City Isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work is ba...
Mar 08, 2023•31 min
"Do as I say, not as I do," is an adage that will echo through the ages. But rarely do we hear it uttered within the hallowed halls of financial regulators. In Australia, this month, the adage is ringing loudly and clearly at the financial conduct regulator. A misconduct investigation involving the most senior staff at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has highlighted the challenges of building and maintaining a strong organisational culture — even for the regulator its...
Mar 02, 2023•19 min
This episode of Compliance Clarified looks at the UK enforcement outlook for 2023 and, notably, the work of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Change is in the air with the arrival of Ashley Alder as chairman from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission and the upcoming departure this spring of Mark Steward, the FCA's long-serving enforcement director. In this episode, Alexander Robson, managing editor, is joined by Rachel Wolcott and Lindsey Rogerson, senior editors in London, to cons...
Feb 23, 2023•20 min
The U.S. SEC’s annual list of examination priorities is a key document setting the agenda for financial services compliance professionals on Wall Street and Main Street. This year the regulator signals it will be examining investment advisers and broker-dealers in light of the “tumult and change” caused by geopolitical and economic events, as well as by rule changes it has imposed in recent years. In this episode, Randall Mikkelsen, managing editor for North America for Regulatory Intelligence, ...
Feb 16, 2023•37 min
If there is one certainty for compliance professionals in the year ahead, it's that they need to be ready for the unexpected. This episode looks at the top regulatory trends for financial services firms in the Asia-Pacific region in 2023. Discussion topics include cyber risk, the war in Ukraine, the post-pandemic economic recovery, and emerging market economic crises, which all set the stage for a volatile and challenging year ahead. Geopolitical tensions have risen to a level not seen since the...
Feb 09, 2023•22 min
This episode looks at top concerns for U.S. financial services compliance professionals this year. Among the biggest emerging issues: Regulatory scrutiny over Wall Street’s involvement in the crypto sector, a proposed revamp of the securities market structure, increased scrutiny of private equity and accounting, and new regulatory exam priorities. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, Randall Mikkelsen, managing editor for North America, is joined by Todd Ehret, senior regulatory intelligence...
Feb 02, 2023•34 min
In the first episode of the new series of Compliance Clarified we discuss 10 things UK and EU Compliance officers need to consider in 2023. In 2022, the financial services sector was influenced by many different factors. On a global level geopolitical, climate and economic risks dominated government’s agendas. Financial services firms were having to find new and innovative ways to address these challenges and the regulatory landscape flexed with more regulations in diversified areas to address t...
Jan 26, 2023•20 min
