fight financial crime (2023)

Anti-money laundering / Anti-money laundering

track dirty money

Preventing money laundering is an ongoing challenge in the face of growing regulatory concerns. This is also reflected in increasingly dense regulatory requirements and due diligence obligations (e.g. FM-GwG). In addition, (regulatory) pressure to combat money laundering (anti-money laundering (AML)) has increased in recent years due to a series of leaks (key words: FinCEN or Nordea Bank), investigations and heavy fines.

Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing goes beyond understanding the new regulations and updating internal guidelines accordingly. Current legal requirements, as well as changing external factors and new criminal patterns, must be considered when challenging and optimizing processes and settings. Modified forms of money laundering, new virtual currencies or payment methods, data breaches and the exploitation of times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic are just some recent examples of a rapidly changing world. That is why the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing is so difficult.

Our services for you:

PwC offers comprehensive anti-money laundering services as our experts combine forensic, banking and financial crime expertise. In this way, we support you in fulfilling your obligations in accordance with applicable law.

• Transaction monitoring:
  • Handle tool hits (to support daily business)
  • Reduce false positives with AI features

• Report BKA:
  Internal handling of suspicious cases (according to GWG)
• Anti-money laundering investigations:
  Setting up investigative units, including project planning, scoping and implementation of money laundering investigations
• Risk and threat analysis:
  Review and adjust regulatory requirements and performance/efficiency
• Ordinance:
  Improvement of inadequate anti-money laundering framework conditions (as a result of audits, internal reviews or supervisory review)
• test:
  Training and workshops (including compliance with your program requirements) and development guides
• tool:
  Perform an analysis to identify weaknesses and gaps (Compliance Program Assessment)
  

Easy compliance with sanctions

Why running an effective sanctions management system is important

Financial sanctions and trade embargoes are a complex and rapidly evolving area that cannot be ignored.

Individual countries, as well as organizations such as the European Union or the United Nations, often impose sanctions on individuals, companies or countries such as Iran or North Korea. They can be aimed at freezing foreign assets, but also trading or transferring assets for certain commodities. However, sanctions can also affect entire sectors of the economy or ban the export of certain goods.

Violations can result in severe reputational damage and severe financial consequences, as shown in the following fines and settlements:

• 2021: Union of Arab and French Banks, $8,572,500
• 2019: UniCredit Group Banks, $611,000,000
• 2014: BNP Paribas, $8,900,000,000

we support you

Keeping in mind the tension between financial interests and sanctioned behaviors, PwC supports your company in identifying sanctions-related risks that are relevant to you and addressing them appropriately. In this way, you can protect yourself from high fines and loss of reputation and position yourself as a reliable partner in global transactions.

We bring together experts from various fields and countries. That is why we are a one-stop shop, offering tailor-made solutions for your company (regardless of the industry). In addition to EU regulations and local requirements, we also specialize in US sanctions.

Sanctions violations often involve concealing the true identities of those involved. By establishing an effective and comprehensive compliance process (KYC, AML/CFT, export controls), synergies can be created and resources used optimally.

Quick sanction check:

Complex sanction programs in a changing market environment also mean that your business faces increasing challenges. Therefore, we offer you the opportunity to check your readiness in this regard using the Sanctions Quick Check.

In our short-term analysis, we outline the challenges you face, as well as existing sanctions threats and security measures. In addition, we will show you potential factors affecting your company's strategy.

Sanctions Administration Services:

If you are looking for a partner to outsource sanctions screening to us, we are the right partner.

With our industry knowledge, technical expertise and operational experience, we help build public trust. We work with you to meet your regulatory obligations.

We advise on the following issues:

• Do you want to outsource sanctions checking? Use our sanction management services to:
  https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/risk-regulation/financial-crime-managed-services.html
  https://www.pwc.pl/pl/usługi/usługi-zarządzane-przestępczością-finansową.html

• Would you like to identify gaps in the current sanctions framework and factors affecting your business? We will be happy to help you with a quick sanction check.

• Would you like to request an independent review of the sanctions control process and policy? Our experts will analyze your tools and means, taking into account market standards and official expectations.

• Are your employees properly trained? We offer training and workshops on the current issues of sanctions.

KYC - How much do you know about your customers?

Why knowing your customer is important

The essence of each KYC process is the identification and verification of basic information about the customer, such as name, type of company, place of business, industry, subject of activity, source of financing or assets, type, scope and structure of product use, legal representative and actual owners. Complement this process by comparing relevant people (customers, CEOs, beneficial owners, politically exposed persons) with existing sanctions lists and conducting public media research. All this information ultimately determines the specific risk classification of the business relationship and thus the customer's KYC testing cycle. At PwC, we understand you, your needs and the challenges you face during the KYC process.

In recent years, numerous negative headlines regarding shortcomings in the fight against money laundering have brought the subject of KYC to the attention of national and international regulators. Each new EU money laundering directive and each change to the existing sanctions regime involves significant additional financial, human and time effort for those subject to KYC and often becomes a race against time: internal IT systems are not on time Modifications or risks and KYC data not updated on time usually results in hefty penalties. Due to the General Data Protection Regulation which has been in force across the EU since 2018, the topic of KYC is getting more and more explosive as it has become fundamentally harder to research customers from public sources under the GDPR and people are eager to disclose personal information by customers fell.

we support you

Whether you want to implement customer screening as part of the customer acceptance process, as part of an ad hoc review when specific trigger events occur, as part of regular KYC updates, or to support short-term KYC profile updates and assessments for large numbers of customers (e.g. due to regulatory requirements): PwC supports you in using the full potential of your existing KYC process or in increasing its efficiency so that you can devote more time to your core business in the future.

We advise on the following issues:

• Do you want your customer data to be up-to-date as required by law? We support you in KYC remediation.
• Would you like to evaluate or even automate your existing (manual) KYC process?
• Do you want to order client onboarding and offboarding? use ourmanagement services.
• Are you looking for support in your daily work? Our KYC experts provide customer identification and verification services.
• Need advice on changing your internal KYC policy (as a result of an audit, internal review or regulator review)?
• Are your employees properly trained? We offer training and workshops on current KYC standards.

Cryptocurrencies - between the legal vacuum and registration obligations

Minimize the risk of money laundering with cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are virtual values ​​("assets") that "do not have the legal status of currency or money, but are accepted as a medium of exchange by natural or legal persons" (§ 2 Z 21 FM-GwG).

The legal use of virtual currencies has many significant advantages, such as more efficient payments and lower transaction costs. Crypto-assets facilitate international payment transactions and enable easy processing of payments by populations that have no or limited access to regular banking services. Not only for this reason, virtual currencies have rapidly developed into flexible and powerful alternatives to fiat currencies in global trade.

Cryptoassets and their manifestations

Cryptocurrency values ​​are also becoming increasingly important in the financial markets. Particularly for banks and financial service providers, as their custodians or operators of their own virtual currency trading platforms, there are many touchpoints with virtual currencies through own or third party transactions involving encrypted assets. Therefore, it is especially important for this target group to understand the legal framework for crypto asset services.

It has long been said that the cryptocurrency industry operates in a legal vacuum. The lack of a central regulatory authority, doubts over responsibility for compliance, oversight and enforcement of AML/CFT regulations for cryptocurrency transactions around the world, and the potential for anonymity provided by the internet continue to be a concern for legislators and regulators. Political reactions to virtual currencies have also been very mixed - while some countries have welcomed the new technology, others have decided to more or less limit its use.

Anyone wishing to provide virtual currency services in Austria must register with the Financial Market Authority (FMA). As part of the registration, it is necessary to describe the internal controls planned to mitigate the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing that may be associated with cryptographic assets (§ 32a FM-GwG). In Austria, the provision of virtual currency services without the necessary regulatory approvals is subject to heavy penalties (§ 34 f. FM-GwG).

With us, you have a reliable partner not only to assess the risk arising from your daily activities with virtual currencies in connection with money laundering and terrorist financing (details of our services can be found here), but also for effective registration with the FMA It is required to establish appropriate internal controls or check the suitability of existing internal control systems (status checks).

How we support you:

• Would you like to outsource some of your operational processes (e.g. KYC)? Use our hosting service:
  https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/risk-regulation/financial-crime-managed-services.html
  https://www.pwc.pl/pl/usługi/usługi-zarządzane-przestępczością-finansową.html

• Would you like to evaluate or even automate your existing KYC process? We will gladly help you.

• Are you looking for help in everyday matters? We support you in the following areas:

  • Customers are identified and verified by our KYC experts taking into account the applicable KYC requirements.

  • Regular review of the KYC and risk profile of current customers against internal guidelines and/or legal or regulatory requirements

  • transaction monitoring

  • Reporting SAR/STR and handling related official investigations (police, banks, prosecutors)

• Need help with FMA registration for virtual currency services? We are happy to advise you here.

• Do you need advice on reviewing internal KYC policies and cryptocurrency readiness checks?

You can find more information about itHere.