Customer insights – October 2020

October 26, 2020

In this months newsletter we share some insights from the roundtable event with our Canadian customers, and provide answers to the latest questions on conducting risk assessments in AML Accelerate and Risk Assessment.

Roundtable Event

Earlier this month, we held a roundtable event with our Canadian credit union community of customers to discuss the challenges of conducting risk assessments. Our guest speaker, Becki LaPorte from CSI, joined us to share her wealth of experience and insights. It was a successful event with everyone connecting over shared challenges resulting from COVID and regulatory changes, and discussing ideas on how to address those challenges.

The COVID pandemic has resulted in an increase in fraud particularly in relation to government loans and incentives. And there has also been a quick move to provide online products, which further attracts fraudsters. The group discussed the importance of risk assessing new products and channels prior to launch.

The focus of regulatory audits was also discussed and the importance of internal checking and testing prior to the regulator visit to understand the effectiveness of your controls.

We look forward to hosting more roundtable events for our wider customer community in the future.

Questions and Answers

AML Accelerate

Question: When conducting risk assessments, is it possible to export our controls to a spreadsheet?

Answer: Yes, company controls can be exported to a CSV file. Go to Settings > Controls Management. On the Controls Management page select the Company Controls tab. To the right side of the page you will see a CSV icon. Click the icon to download your company controls in CSV format.

Question: Can a report be generated of the completed risk factors, with space for comments or notes relating to board approval?

Answer: Whilst conducting your risk assessment, you can view the completed risks and their ratings by selecting the Review and Publish chevron at the top, and then selecting Risk Categories from the menu on the left. The top half of the page shows the risk rating by risk category, and the lower half shows the ratings for each risk. There are Comment fields on this page where you can enter additional information such as minutes from a board meeting. Remember to click the green button at the bottom of the page to save your comments. To generate a PDF of the risk assessment that includes this summary page and comments, press the Draft button at the top right and select the report option for Risk Assessment PDF.

Question: What is the best way to add tables to the AML Program document and CDD document within AML Accelerate?

Answer: Once you have conducted your risk assessment, there are two ways to add tables to the AML and CDD documents within AML Accelerate. The first option is to create the table using AML Accelerate’s text editor window which has a Table function. The other option is create a table in Excel or a document and paste it into the platform. When copying a table from a document, such as Word, there’s a chance of inadvertently including some HTML which may disrupt how the table displays in AML Accelerate, therefore be sure to select only the table, and none of the content around it such as empty lines or paragraphs.

Question: What factors determine whether a product or service is considered higher risk?

Answer: Products are marked higher risk are if they are known to have been used for money laundering in real cases and/or appear in typologies issued by regulators. For example, compare Stored-Value (Gift) Cards and Prepaid Debit Cards. While they have very similar descriptions, gift cards can be transferred anonymously whereas debit cards are linked to verified accounts; therefore gift cards are considered high risk while debit cards are not.

Risk Assessment

Question: How are Stakeholders added to the sub-assessment report? Where in the risk assessment should they be added?

Answer: Stakeholders are recorded in the sub-assessment report in Appendix D, chapter “Stakeholders Consulted”. This chapter is populated from the Stakeholders Consulted field in the Control Test Results popup page of each control. To access the Control Test Results popup, press the “+” button that appears to the right of the control and that has the tooltip “Add Test Results”.

If you have any questions on conducting risk assessments or if you’d like to participate in our next event, click contact us to speak with one of our friendly staff.

Patricia Sellars-Jones, Customer Manager

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