The Situation

At my Global Investment Bank Client as Regional Programme Manager for EMEA Financial Crime Analytics & Intelligence (Transaction Monitoring analysis),  I was responsible for the implementation of a new strategic framework as well as tactical solutions.

In the Russian entity there was an unplanned gap in Central Bank of Russia (CBR) monitoring requirements that had a hard deadline for on-site regulatory visit.

 

The Task

With no immediate fix available to meet the unplanned CBR requirements It was my job to present options to the Steering Committee.

The Action / Approach

Having identified the requirements for the regulatory monitoring (tax payments), my analytics team established that no such scenario was covered in the current legacy system.

I lead the team to pull together all relevant information and data on the requirement and solutions and came up with 4 options:

  1. Modify the legacy system (Norkom = expensive, slow and lost investment)
  2. Use the new strategic investment (Mantas) = part of the suite in the new system but implementation was not planned for next year.
  3. Develop code ourselves outside system landscape for this scenario (could be done, fast & cheap but carried risk of maintenance cost and failure) – RECOMMENDED
  4. Monitor manually (labour intensive, high risk of missing alerts/errors and not Regulatory preference)

I presented the options with associated volume, risk, cost and time data to the Steerco and recommended option C. with a long term solution of option B.

The Result

Outcome:

  • Steerco requested confirmation from Russian CEO of the Regulatory requirement – evidence was presented of the regulator request which I could not obtain.
  • Steerco also enquired with Global AFC if the mantas strategic implementation could be pulled forward – this was not possible as already established.
  • I also investigated why the request was a surprise and to avoid this from happening again, a Global Compliance Reg Office was set up to track ALL requirements and remediations.
  • Option C was taken forward and successfully delivered and approved by internal audit and the CBR.

Practice