compliance

With effect from 4th April, 2018, new rules will apply to Australian financial services (AFS) licensees that hold "derivative retail client money."

Inevitably, it's not that simple. Then again, our detailed analysis shows that compliance should not be expensive or difficult,

In May 2017, I addressed the global annual conference of the Institute of Enterprise Risk Managers. During that presentation, aimed at the CEOs of major corporations, I explained that board members are responsible for the whole of the Group, not merely a division or even the company of which they are expressly a director of. In this article, I publish those comments, as scripted.

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.

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?

Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission has fined MIS Services Limited, formerly Standard Chartered Investment Services HKD3million for an astonishing breach of regulations: it failed to have in post staff who met the qualifying requirements. The breach is not trivial: it lasted for nine years. It raises questions over the performance of the company, its parent(s) and the regulator.

Clearly there was oversight when there should have been supervision.

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?

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.

The USA's Internal Revenue Service and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) have announced that a small subset of individuals with only signature authority required to file the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBARs) will receive a one-year extension beyond the previously notified filing date of 30 June, 2011.