KYCnet at the HES Career Day

Careers in Compliance

by Alex van Ommen

On Wednesday, the 3rd of April, KYCnet participated in the HES Career Day at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. The event provided students the opportunity to come into contact with a wide range of companies, big and small. Interests ranged from business sectors to opportunities for internships and jobs.

The KYCnet stand was set up and ready to go as the first students began to trickle in. Nestled between a large airline and a small fashion house, company representatives Alex van Ommen and Abdelaziz Elasmar welcomed and spoke to scores of students throughout the day. Abdelaziz, formerly an intern who grew into an employee, and Alex, in service since 2011, caught students' attention with stories of money launderers, drugs dealers and terrorists as related to the exciting world of compliance.

In addition to the activities on the Career Day main floor, KYCnet also ran two workshops as a part of the general program. Both of the workshops were well-attended and Alex provided a nice introduction to compliance as a very necessary part of the world of international finance and specifics on the importance and impact of past, present, and developing AML/CTF regulations.

KYCnet’s co-founder, Patrick Ryan, was also present for one of the workshops, fielding questions and engaging attendees, giving them the opportunity to get a real sense of who KYCnet is and how it works.

For most of the students, this was their first experience learning about things like sanctions and compliance regimes. The interest drummed up was clear in the reactions by the students.

Those who stayed after for further Q&A were not just interested in internships and employment opportunities, but also the nature of compliance and its relationship to international business.

The Web Search Craftsman

Whittle while you work

by Alex Van Ommen

Until somewhere in the beginning of the 21st century, a question about a fact could spark a discussion with passionate camps. It could have been anything from whether or not a particular film came out in 1991 or 1992 to Harry S. Truman's middle name. Everyone brought their own good sense to the table and would duke it out rhetorically, sometimes leaving the most adamantly supported (but not always correct) viewpoint to prevail.

This was also the time when we still learned how to use a card catalog in the school library, probably had an encyclopedia set gracing the bookshelves of the family library, and when everyone used rotary phones and the phone book to make a call and understood the relationship between a pencil and a cassette tape. Finding information was a manual, labor intensive task, whether it was browsing the stacks or twisting your way to the beginning of that bootleg Aerosmith tape.

For more, see here.

Facebook's Graph: Not just for stalkers

The latest contribution to open source information-seeking

by: Alex van Ommen

Mark Zuckerberg's new baby is the talk of the town. The Internet is tripping over itself to talk about this amazing new way of searching Facebook and what it will mean for everyone. As with everything Facebook, there are always a few voices in the wilderness crying foul against privacy (or just calling it creepy), but most users won't change their settings, dumping a host of personal information into the public domain. Could it change social media? Quite possibly. In time, we may hear “Graph” join the lexicon of Internet verbs like “Google” and “tweet.” It will most certainly have an impact on how we find out about people, but not necessarily what.

Read more here.

KYCnet at the ACAMS NL FATCA Event

Patrick presented his thoughts on Legal Entity analysis at the recent ACAMS NL FATCA event. In the words of Barry Freeman,

"Patrick began by stating that at this point in time there are more questions to be asked than answers given.  His message was:

• FFIs will be able to do a good job on natural person account holders as:
• They have the identity, communications and payment information to perform an effective US persons probability analysis;
• They also have a pre-existing communication mechanism in place to contact and request information, certification etc.
• FFIs will struggle more with legal entities:
• The initial categorisation into US legal persons, FFIs and NFFEs may be difficult;
• The further analysis and categorisation of NFFEs into active and passive will require information discovery of a nature uncommon or unknown within the standard AML KYC/CDD world, e.g. passive/active earnings ratios, asset utilisations; active/passive subsidiary analyses; five year histories etc.
• Passive NFFE controlling interest discovery and US person identification will be difficult;
• FFIs do not have any communication mechanisms in place regarding controlling interests which is another difficulty.

It is therefore important for FFIs to ensure they understand the difference between a controlling interesting and an ultimate beneficial owner (UBO).

Patrick concluded with some good advice concerning the one year delay to the FATCA timetable from January 2013 to January 2014.  The additional time can be used by FFIs to ensure their three year remediation cycle for high, medium and low risk clients is robust to ensure that the database is correct and FATCA-compliant in terms of the types of records and information required."

- Barry J. Freeman

Communications Director
ACAMS Netherlands Chapter

KYC Maturity Model published in ACAMS Today

The KYCnet KYC Maturity Model was recently published in ACAMS Today, the journal
of the Association of Anti-Money Laundering Specialist.

The first page is below - contact KYCnet to request a longer copy.


The Need for Improvement

With changing regulation, increasing market competition and consolidation — especially within the

context of the current financial crises, banks and other financial institutions need to better manage

risk, reduce cost and increase revenues.

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a niche business process and is often costly and inefficient. The real direct and indirect people costs are high and continue to increase. KYC is also a non-core competency  requiring the continuous retraining  of  a wide range of senior staff and reinvestments in non-revenue-generating policy, procedure and process definition. As an often inefficient and infrequently performed  non-core activity, quality and morale can suffer, leading to audit issues such as incomplete or out-of-date files and AML customer  events going unrecorded or non-investigated.  Furthermore,  KYC is also a great source of client dissatisfaction with regular annoyance caused by inexperienced or distracted account managers  failing to complete client on-boarding and periodic reviews in a timely or efficient manner, with particular client irritation caused by confusion and numerous  follow-up requests  for clarifications, alternative or additional documents etc.

KYC process improvement needs to directly address these cost, efficiency, core, quality and satisfaction issues by so doing, improve risk management, reduce costs and support front office staff in their efforts to concentrate more on revenue generating activity.

Infosys teams-up with KYCnet

The KYCnet / Infosys Solution for KYC Remediation Infosys has invested in a Compliance Center of Excellence (CCoE) to drive excellence in client engagements. Its CCoE has full service capabilities in operations across clients for KYC and AML Transaction Monitoring and Watch List Management. In a strategic partnership with KYCnet, Infosys leverages its CCoE to provide KYC services, both ongoing and remediation. Clients can now leverage industry best practices to meet their regulatory and business risk management requirements. In collaboration with KYCnet, the following services are offered to clients: Our KYC services benefits • Leveraging industry best practices to meet KYC requirements • Facilitating clients to leverage alternative talent pools • Rendering consistent process, people and technology for performing both ongoing and remediation services, a critical requirement for satisfying regulatory audits • Offering cost advantages by leveraging a global delivery model For more infomation, please contact infosys@kycnet.com

KYCnet exhibiting at ACAMS

KYCnet is exhibiting at the 8th Annual ACAMS AML&CFT Conference on June 10-12th in Amsterdam.
We look forward to sharing our KYC / CDD insights and experience with more than 300 leading industry delegates. Delegates can also expect to gain:

• direct access to regulators, governing authorities and international leading experts
• critical insight on the latest regulatory and legislative developments

• a depth insight of how the criminal mind works from the analysis of international investigations of real life cases

• up-to-the-minute intelligence on emerging financial crime schemes

• effective problem solving strategies to successfully overcome daily challenges

To register, click here.