July 7, 2015

Fighting money laundering in the back office

U.S.--Organizations are on high alert for signs of money laundering. Alerts raised in the field or by detection systems need to be investigated in a timely manner to satisfy customer service levels or notify authorities. Action needs to be taken quickly, decisively and by agents with the correct skills and authority.

Using workforce optimization solutions specifically designed for complex back office processing teams, organizations can monitor all tasks and process activity performed by investigative staff in real-time, enabling proactive interventions in the fight against money launderers.

Elizabeth Gooch, CEO, eg solutions, stated: “Money laundering is the generic term used to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and control of the proceeds of criminal conduct by making them appear to have derived from a legitimate source,”

“The processes by which criminally derived property may be laundered are extensive. Although criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, the reality is that hundreds of billions of dollars of criminally derived money is laundered through financial institutions annually. The nature of the services and products offered by the financial services industry (namely managing, controlling and possessing money and property belonging to others) means that it is vulnerable to abuse by money launderers,” she added. “Critical to this is the role that the back office can play in meeting the needs of corporate governance and compliance in the fight against fraudsters.”

The detection systems, processes and policies required to prevent fraud are increasingly supported by the IT vendor community with systems to support customer due diligence and identify suspicious transactions. Case management systems continue to be the focal point for the collating of information and decisions made.

However, the rising operational challenge is how to predict the volume of alerted cases and then allocate them to the right agent with the right skills, availability, authority and capacity needed to make a timely judgment to proceed with transactions or notify the authorities.

Ensuring that agent resources are in step with forecasted and actual demand is exactly where back office workforce optimization solutions significantly contribute to the operational success in combating illegal transactions.

The eg operational intelligence software suite is currently deployed in multiple organizations, providing:-

·          Planning and forecasting for anticipated volumes of work, resources and skills required to meet regulatory and SLA targets.

·          Monitoring and verifying in real-time the volumes of work, type of case and the actual time required to investigate and complete a transaction.

·          Monitoring in real-time available the total agent capacity, skills and authority to complete investigation irrespective of location.

·          Real-time automatic or manual allocation of work to agents based on the above with real-time management information and audit trails on the entire operational process.

·          Links to existing case management, BPM or document management systems to ensure agents have the right information at hand to review a case.

As well as producing detailed post-activity reports with options for independent review, verification by a third party and for staff to check their own work, providing multiple check points, eg’s software solution can mitigate operational risk and evidence compliance.

Elizabeth Gooch added: “The consequences of being unable to monitor or detect non-compliant activity within business activity at an individual or enterprise level have rarely been greater. For many in the financial services sector the ability to provide evidence of compliance activity is vital, no more so than in the back office.

“With increasingly complex and regulated back office operations, it is essential to be able to demonstrate that individuals undertaking specific activities are fully skilled and competent in doing so. But the challenge many organizations face is how to effectively monitor real-time and historic activity to ensure that not only the right people – the eyes – but also the right number of people are involved in completing specific activities and the end-to-end business processes.”