Compliance

On 19th April, Australia's newest national bank, Members' Equity Bank a.k.a. ME Bank, announced that it was to increase its interest rates on existing home loans, with effect from 19th April. Then it made a silly error. Given that the banking sector in Australia is under the most intense scrutiny and that it would be logical to assume that, if at any time, this is the time where banks will double, triple even quadruple check their actions, the stupidity of the error raises a serious question: is the financial sector in Australia simply under-skilled and, therefore, unfit for purpose?

A thread on Linked-In raises the question of why the opportunity to join in the class action announced against Commonwealth Bank of Australia is not available to many shareholders. Here's a simplified guide to class actions - and why the CBA case bears more than a passing resemblance to a shareholder action against The Bank of New York.

Canada's Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions has issued a regulatory notice containing a reminder that there are a number of reserved words, particularly those relating to banking, which may not be used without authority, in relation to financial services. It goes far beyond the use of the words in the name of businesses and will tighten up sloppy language in marketing and so-called social media. It might, also, inadvertently, make the point that "fintech" companies are not banks and do not afford consumers the protection that governments provide to bank depositors.

This is such a massive topic that we can, today, do little more than make a placeholder article. How, one has to ask, does anyone "miss" tens of thousands of errors? We think it's probably not too difficult and banks, etc. should take note.

There are two principles in the soft conversion of societies to various forms of centralised control, be that control from the left or right of politics, from vested interests or religion.

The first is the manipulation of language: using terms in ways that are inaccurate and, even, the direct opposite of what they truly mean.

The second is to give individual members of society the illusion that they have status, even a degree of control when in fact what they have is responsibility without authority.

Welcome to the worrying world of today's Financial Crime Risk and Compliance Officers.

Below, free content, is my interview, given in May 2017 at the Thompson Reuters Regulatory Summit in Singapore, published today.

It's frustrating just how fundamentally stupid some people can be.

In the aftermath of 11 September, 2001, the blame machine was hunting for excuses and part of it rightly fixated on funds transfers and, rightly, fixated on the unlicensed transfer systems which were lumped together under the Farsi name "hawala." Then stupid, ignorant people started trying to sound clever and instead of standing up to them and correcting them, others started to adopt their nonsensical, made up terminology. Now they want to include it in law.

When the Department of Justice and others settled criminal proceedings against Western Union there were two special features: one, liability was admitted and two "ensure that its agents around the world will adhere to U.S. Regulatory and [counter-money laundering] standards."

Is this doable while remaining profitable or does the settlement mean inevitable de-risking and closing in some markets?

The cult of paying various US government departments, or "agencies" to say nothing of state prosecutors, to to avoid prosecution using the dubious formula of "without admitting or denying the allegations" has reached a new height as a Canadian banking group has "agreed to remit USD516,105 to settle its potential civil liability."

Note "potential." Are such deals evidence of bribery ("we'll give you money if you leave us alone") or of blackmail ("give us money or we'll cost you a fortune in dealing with a long and complex, and heavily disruptive investigation that we all know will turn up something in even the best run companies. And yes, of course we know you aren't American")

The trouble is: there were extensive compliance failures and, as in so many cases, a failure by a non-US bank to recognise the long arm of US law and regulation where US dollars are used.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has permanently banned the owner and sole director of an insurance brokerage from the financial services industry. Christopher John Griggs of Chris Griggs Insurance Offices Pty Ltd, Mount Pleasant, South Australia, forged documents and applied for credit using the names of third parties without their knowledge.

The decision by US messaging service WhatsApp to allow its parent company, Facebook, access to user's data raises enormous questions for compliance and ethics teams in financial institutions, law firms and many other businesses. Should Compliance Officers now ban the use of WhatsApp for both transactional messaging and communications with clients? And should data protection registrars now issue warnings as to the release of client-related data? In fact, should the app now be banned entirely from all mobile devices used in any way for work purposes?

The announcement by the US Treasury that it was implementing financial sanctions against North Korea should make no difference to most properly advised financial organisations.

While Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission was investigating a case of suspected insider dealing, it traced funds to a clients' account by a third party, innocent, broker. The SFC has ordered the broker to block access to those funds and assets represented by part of the funds. There is something unusual about the process.

Scam e-mails are nothing new and usually they are so boring they don't even register. But "Woolcock" paulwk@gmail.com 's "Money Transfer" scam mail is so amusing it justifies being included in the Fraud Hall of Fame. By the way, it was sent to an e-mail address at "countermoneylaundering.com." Twit.

Carlo V di Florio, Director, Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination at the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission says that compliance and ethics are each an integral part of risk management in all businesses but especially in the financial sector were reputation greatly matters to the individual, to individual businesses to the industry as a whole and, ultimately, to the entire country. He was speaking to the National Society of Compliance Professionals on 17 October 2011.