East African risk consultancy Hazton assigns award-wining Arctic Intelligence as their RegTech partner of choice

June 22, 2022

Hazton Risk Consultancy is a financial crime consultancy firm based in Uganda. Their services span across policy and risk framework reviews, evaluating lines of defence, conducting risk assessments, and board/exec management governance assessment and training. Hazton wanted to improve their offering to customers by digitising critical aspects of the risk management process. The arduous risk assessment and the audit process which tops and tails the compliance cycle. Arctic Intelligence’s solutions were complementary to their services and enabled efficiency and effectiveness in their delivery and output. These key components led to Hazton’s decision to adopt Arctic Intelligence’s financial crime solutions in 2022.

Arctic Intelligence is a global RegTech firm headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with its core competencies focused on financial crime risk assessments and audit solutions. Arctic boasts a broad financial crime risk domain offering on their proprietary Risk Assessment Platform which continues to evolve based on market demands. It has an in-house product development team that provides regular enhancements to the platform to deliver on their customer-first approach. Meeting demands within a niche market is critical to Arctic’s success and another reason for Hazton’s acceleration with Arctic Intelligence.

“Hazton Risk is super excited about the partnership opportunity with the Arctic intelligence to help financial institutions(FIs) evidence an effective financial crime risk assessment. The partnership comes at a time when de-risking in Africa is on a rise as major correspondent banks continue to terminate services with their respondent counter parties who fail to prove transparency and an effective Financial crime Risk Assessment.

Our partnership will further help FIs overcome the challenges of the costly manual process of just box ticking and spread sheets currently used by Banks which might lead to subjectivity. Arctic Intelligence risk assessment platforms bring rich modern technology that delivers a Risk Based approach compliance programme as required by the regulator as well as demonstrating transparency to their correspondent banks.”
Ntege Kato, Managing Director of Hazton Risk Consultancy

Hazton has now become a key extension of the Arctic network in the African region which supports Arctic Intelligence’s earlier partnership in 2020 with FCRMC based in South Africa. The African region now have two consultancies pioneering Arctic Intelligence’s solutions in the regionin region. The need for innovation within the compliance cycle is evident as greater adoption of RegTech continues to grow in this market. Arctic Intelligence also has an anti-money laundering (AML) solution AML Accelerate, available for smaller enterprises or any organisations looking for an out-of-the-box AML risk assessment solution. This enables regulated entities based in Africa to conduct their own risk assessments with the combined strength of industry expert content and award-winning technology.

Arctic Intelligence is pleased to be Hazton Risk Consultancy’s financial crime partner of choice as they scale their operations within East Africa. According to the UNCTAD’s Economic Development Report 2020, estimated that $88.6B is the cost of financial crime in the African continent. This issue is hindering the regions sustainable development and is leading to the eroding trust in some African institutions. South Africa, a FATF member, is leading the region in resolving its AML/CTF system shortcomings identified in the 2021 comprehensive review.

The Health Check Platform (HCP) is a smart workflow which can be used as a tool to audit an organisations design and operational effectiveness of their compliance programs. HCP will allow Hazton to perform its checks across its range of services to provide business intelligence and key recommendations based on data analysis.

“The 2021 AML Benchmark Report found that conducting risk assessments with technology is more effective in understanding AML risks and demonstrating compliance. Hazton’s adoption of RegTech in the African region proves an increasing desire and appetite for innovation within the regulatory environment. We are pleased to welcome Hazton Risk Consultancy as a new member to our global network.”
Anthony Quinn, Founder of Arctic Intelligence