Although the GDPR—designed to augment consumers’ data protection and privacy—is the brainchild of the Council of the European Union and European Parliament, its reach extends far beyond Europe. In the United States, it is no longer a choice but a must for financial firms to adopt stricter consumer-data-protection measures. The costs of not doing so far outweigh the costs of compliance; regulators expect data security, and so do customers.
SWIFT has a long history of enabling financial institutions to communicate with each other reliably and securely; thousands of banks use the SWIFT network for interbank messaging. Faced with the twin threats of intensifying cybercrime and growing compliance requirements, banks are scrambling to be secure and compliant while also profitable. SWIFT has developed robust financial-crime solutions that assist its members to comply with the gamut of regulations—from AML to KYC—profitably.
Banks are supposed to put up sturdy walls to protect the sensitive financial information that they closely guard, but sometimes these silos work to the benefit of the fraudsters intent on breaking in and stealing it. When bank teams work together, they present a much stronger unified barrier against cyber-criminals. What five steps do banks need to take to make this collaboration happen?
In the decade following the global financial crisis, banks have faced a flood of new laws and regulations. The pace of change has been furious. Banks have been forced to hire more and more bodies to manage large, enterprise-wide efforts in an attempt to simply stay ahead of regulatory enforcement actions and the ensuing fines and penalties.
Being your company’s chief compliance officer is not a job for the faint of heart. Being the intermediary between regulators and your fellow staff is guaranteed to make you unpopular at times—and the position can render you vulnerable to reputational risk. What are the core attributes needed to transcend the risks to become the most effective CCO possible, protecting your company against the potentially devastating consequences of non-compliance?
The financial services industry relies more on information technology than any other sector. That makes perfect sense given the high-speed and detail-oriented nature of the industry. Unfortunately, it’s costing a lot more to protect and maintain financial data these days.
All over the world, regulations have been implemented to protect economies, especially following the major recession 10 years ago. But unfortunately they have not always been executed in concert, leading to costly regulatory fragmentation. Banks have been particularly hard hit by the costs of compliance to misaligned regulation, with resources being drained away from more productive areas. But there are ways to mend these divergences, starting with cooperation between regulators.
What a huge advance it is that the financial sector now has robots to relieve the ever-growing pressure of regulation. Almost everyone handling or processing personal data now faces vastly increased compliance requirements once the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation
Without regulations, digitalisation is not feasible. New rules and laws are a headache for banks and increase the administrative burden while reducing client satisfaction. But they also create transparency and openness, which can lead to new and improved financial services. The challenge is how to provide new services in a customer-centric way. Regtech may be the solution.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, particularly in the sphere of AML-compliance in the banking industry. Yes, it is costly to establish an effective AML-control structure, but non-compliance costs can be much more taxing—so how do financial firms institute cultures of compliance throughout their operations that ultimately minimize risks to all parties involved and increase enterprise value?