Climate change, a.k.a. global warming, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns are getting real for financial services firms, particularly those working in securities trading. This is also true for the regulators overseeing them such as the SEC. A case in point is our story this week about a $247 billion pension fund, the New… Read More >>
Empire State Bans & Fines Bitfinex & Tether
New York Attorney General Letitia James is requiring Bitfinex and Tether, two crypto-currency trading platforms, “to end all trading activity with New Yorkers.” Her reason for the exile? Their practices are allegedly “fraudulent and deceptive” and the crypto-traders are “hiding approximately $850 million in losses around the globe,” the New York A.G. says in a… Read More >>
FinCEN Urges Banks to Share More Crime Info
The director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the United States Department of the Treasury wants to make it easier for banks to share information about real and potential financial crimes. Citing a provision of the USA Patriot Act, Director Kenneth A. Blanco has put together a fact sheet and addressed the sharing… Read More >>
CFTC Enforcers Report Banner Year for 2020
’Tis the season for annual reports, and one of the most instructive is from the regulator Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and its Division of Enforcement. When it comes to the CFTC’s mission to “be tough on those who break the rules,” as Division of Enforcement Acting Director Vince McGonagle puts it in a commission… Read More >>
Nasdaq Bolsters Its Crime-Fighting Line-Up
Nasdaq Inc. is acquiring Verafin, based in Canada, and its set of related “anti-financial crime management products.” These related products use “data analytics, machine learning, and visualization and investigation tools.” The Nasdaq platform itself is widely known as the first electronic exchange, and the goal of this acquisition, according to a statement, is to deploy… Read More >>
Pandemic Drives Up Costs for Fighting Financial Crime
The pandemic is surging and, partly because of the coronavirus epidemic, so is the cost of monitoring and reporting financial crime. The graphs and spreadsheets that financial services professionals pore over are bringing the disturbing news. And as one veteran observer of the securities industry puts it, Wall Street doesn’t like what it sees. Just… Read More >>
Financial Crime Probes Miss the Mark: Report
Banks and other financial firms are expected to encounter “increasing risks and exposure to losses” because of “hackers and online adversaries.” That is the top-line conclusion of the 2020 Global Financial Crimes Survey, conducted by Authentic8, in partnership with the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists (ACFCS). Authentic8 offers a platform that “enables anyone, anywhere,… Read More >>
FinCEN Moves to Overhaul AML Practices
Changes are coming to banks’ the anti-money laundering practices and procedures. The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has unveiled an early look at those proposed prospective changes in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), soliciting public comment on pending regulatory amendments under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The FinCEN’s proposal is likely… Read More >>
NICE Actimize Targets Mid-Market via ‘Xceed’
The just-launched Xceed platform from NICE Actimize brings together aspects of anti-money laundering (AML), fraud prevention, artificial intelligence (AI), and behavioral analytics in a cloud-native offering. Cloud-native systems have been developed specifically for the cloud computing environment, and are intended to leverage the advantages of the cloud. They are not platforms that were originally designed… Read More >>
$96M of Luxury Loot Sought via 1MDB Scandal
The United States Justice Department (DoJ) reports that it has filed civil forfeiture complaints aimed at the “recovery of approximately $96 million in assets allegedly associated with an international conspiracy to launder funds misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.” Those assets include “luxury real estate in Paris, artwork by Claude… Read More >>
