Firms must establish and maintain robust defences and risk management frameworks that identify and mitigate money laundering and bribery and corruption risks. So says the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA, http://www.fca.org.uk) that took over from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in April 2013.
Although previous regulatory action relating to anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) systems and controls failings has focused on the banking and insurance sectors, there are significant risks in other sectors. So the FCA did a review, begun by the FSA, on asset management and platform firms to assess whether the sector is taking adequate steps to mitigate the money laundering and bribery and corruption risks it faces.
Although the regulators found some good examples of risk management – for instance, most firms had relatively well-developed arrangements for the ownership of money laundering and bribery and corruption risks – the FCA says that it found common weaknesses across the 22 firms in our sample. Given the communications it has issued on AML and ABC, it expected the industry to have done more.
For the 13-page report visit the FCA website.
