Australia has thousands of banks and financial services companies, including over 600 fintech’s, and it is one of the most developed economies in APAC and the globe. These financial institutions must learn to traverse a complex legal structure designed to protect the country’s financial system from money laundering and terrorist funding risks. The government is presently working to improve its systems for anti-money laundering in Australia to counter-terrorist financing regime.
How Does Money Laundering Occur in the Banking Industry?
The technique of making unlawfully obtained funds appear legitimate is known as money laundering. Criminals frequently use wire transfers to many accounts to move black money around and generate confusion. Also, to evade suspicion, money launderers deposit cash even in small amounts or smuggle money into foreign countries. This way, black money seems clean, and the financial system absorbs it due to these many transactions. Criminals might utilise the cash laundered from legitimate accounts to fund organised crime, human and drug trafficking, or terrorism.
AML refers to a system of rules, laws, and procedures that help to detect and prevent criminals from misrepresenting illegal funds as genuine income. Besides, banks and financial institutions benefit from anti-money laundering policies. In order to do that, banks must gather customer information, monitor and screen their transactions, and report suspicious conduct to financial regulatory authorities under AML requirements.
Importance of Anti-Money Laundering in the Banking Industry
Banks are among the most powerful financial institutions, as well as they are more vulnerable to financial crimes than other institutions since they handle millions of transactions every day. This is the reason why criminal groups frequently carry out money laundering through banks and other financial institutions.
So, as a remedy, banks must identify risks by complying with their anti-money laundering duties and taking the required steps. The anti-money laundering (AML) process is crucial to a bank’s financial and reputational status. This procedure is compulsory by law for auditors and regulators.
Furthermore, the advent of online payments and the technical revolution in financial infrastructure have increased the necessity for more stringent customer identity protection. Banks and financial institutions are now adopting new and developing trends in AI-based AML solutions to handle AML compliance more efficiently in response to new and more strict requirements.
How Does Anti-Money Laundering Work in Banking?
With their anti-money laundering compliance program, banks must address four critical areas, which are:
- Know Your Customer (KYC): When a consumer opens a bank account, Know Your Customer (KYC) identifies and validates their identification. KYC is the first crucial stage in an AML procedure, and it is necessary for banks.
- Customer Due Diligence (CDD): CDD is a control process used by banks to gather essential information about a customer’s profile and analyse it for potential money laundering or terrorist financing risk. Although CDD processes differ by country, they always have the same goal: to discover dangers.
- Screening of customers and transactions: In general, banks and financial institutions have a diverse consumer base. And, it is a severe crime for a bank to act as a middleman for payments made to someone who has been sanctioned or blocked.
- Reporting of suspicious activity: Law enforcement agencies scrutinise financial data for unusual activity or discrepancy during money laundering investigations.
Banks must develop an efficient compliance program for anti-money laundering in Australia that complies with regulatory standards and that handles money laundering risks. Failures in the AML compliance program may result in regulatory penalties for institutions. Also, all controls and directions that are used to ensure banks satisfy their duties and avoid regulatory fines are included in AML compliance procedures.
Author Bio:
Alison Lurie is a farmer of words in the field of creativity. She is an experienced independent content writer with a demonstrated history of working in the writing and editing industry. She is a multi-niche content chef who loves cooking new things.
