Just over half of employees in European financial institutions believe there is a strong attitude towards anti-financial crime (AFC) from the top, new research claims.
ACAMS, which claims to be the largest international membership organisation for Anti-Financial Crime professionals, conducted research on the attitudes towards AFC compliance. It compiled its data via a survey of 349 professionals, two roundtables discussions with chief compliance officers at major financial institutions and interviews with 11 executives from regulatory bodies.
While 52% of European respondents believed there to be a strong tone from the top of their organisation, this percentage was significantly higher in the US, with 73% of respondents claiming strong support from the top.
Another finding from the report was that 77% of respondents feel their managers, peers and colleagues lead by example in their behaviour towards anti-financial crime. Furthermore, 73% think their managers, colleagues and peers would withdraw from a business opportunity if there were concerns for financial crime.
Following its research, ACAMS claims there needs to be more investment into AFC technology. Beyond improving technology, the organisation states more training, bigger AFC teams, greater AFC budgets, better enforcement from the top and an improved feedback loop from law enforcement could improve AFC within institutions.
RegTech platform Sigma Ratings commented on the findings, stating that companies spending money on compliance technology spend less money in total on their regulatory processes. It also helps free staff up to spend more time on high-value tasks.
Speaking on the findings, Sigma Ratings’ Hamad Alhelal, Cams said, “At Sigma, we’ve heard the same from clients leveraging Sigma’s Terminal platform, especially in investigative workflows. The Terminal makes it easy for compliance teams to search across datasets consistently, return a standardized view of risk and pinpoint risk for timely, confident decision making in line with an institution’s risk based approach – ensuring a more robust and consistent culture of compliance across the institution.”
Some of the other key findings of the report include 64% of respondents agree their organisation is well equipped to deal with the level of AFC risk it is facing, and 62% agree there are sufficient skilled and trained personnel for AFC in their organisation.
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