In response to a growing necessity among financial institutions to provide anti-money laundering solutions, BITS hosted its first anti-money laundering forum Friday.
The forum, titled “Bridging the Gap between Legislation and Implementation,” offered information regarding the growing trends and methods money launderers use to avoid detection.
Forum experts say that money launders are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their methods of keeping their activities from showing up on industry radars, and Federal regulators responding by expanding their investigative scope beyond banks, and in turn opening up a new world of compliance challenges for all lines of financial institutions, including securities trading and edge funds.
With regulatory requirements from more than a dozen federal, state, and international regulators changing at a rapid rate, experts say most financial institutions simply do not have adequate systems in place to keep up with regulatory expectations or internal growth, opening them to risk.
However, even with the right tools in place, Jim Wills of Fortent, who spoke at the forum, says it takes a company-wide commitment to make compliance effective.