On Tuesday, EU finance ministers met following the European Union’s decision to adopt tougher anti-money laundering (AML) rules. This meeting is going to confirm proposals made by the European Commission in September to give more power to the European Banking Authority – aiming to interrupt and deny criminals access to financial resources.
The need for tighter rules follows a number of recent incidents involving money laundering in EU banks. In the last two years alone, the UK Financial Intelligence Unit received 634,113 suspicious activity reports. These incidents have sparked concerns that AML rules are not being correctly enforced around Europe. According to identity verification experts at Trulioo, a more global approach to money laundering will help to reduce risk within the financial services sector.
Zac Cohen, General Manager of Trulioo comments: “As banks and financial services operate on a global scale, it is more important than ever for organisations to face the reality of handling cross border transactions. With the increased globalisation of financial services, money laundering is becoming progressively widespread. Due to limited transparency and information sharing, banks and other financial institutions are vulnerable to financial crime. If proper anti-money-laundering procedures aren’t in place, these institutions face major consequences, such as large fines – or even imprisonment – and a rise in fraudulent activity.
“In order to transmit counterfeit funds through banks, bad actors are turning to more sophisticated techniques such as under or over-invoicing, falsifying documents and misrepresenting financial transactions.
Zac continues; “Using state-of-the-art digital tools, such as automated systems and AI-driven technology helps to streamline the process of checking and verifying the ultimate beneficial owners (UBO) of a business. This in turn can isolate the source of the funds and ensure compliance to regulations. Applying programmed systems when scouring company documents will help create an enhanced electronic ID verification system to certify personal information. Combining this with ID document checks and facial recognition technology will help to paint a full picture of each business.”
