KYC origin stories, chapter 4 – Orbis: The powerhouse of global business intelligence

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 set off a series of global sanctions enforcement actions. The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has meted out sanctions to curb Russia’s defense procurement, energy weaponization, and international trade activity. To date, the EU has also imposed 12 sanctions packages on restrictive measures – with the 13th to be formally approved in February.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Andrea Viski, founder and director of the Strategic Trade Research Institute and editor-in-chief of the Strategic Trade Review, on how the global sanctions environment has changed since the invasion, and where the biggest risks in sanctions-related financial crime lie.

This conversation covers topics including:

• The impact of sanctions packages on Russia’s economy – where the sanctions have been effective in disconnecting Russia from global trade and economic activity
• How the global sanctions environment has changed since the invasion
• New challenges KYC and AML professionals now face, and how they can mitigate sanctions-related risks
• The latest sanctions evasion trends and red flags

For additional resources mentioned in this episode, visit:

• WorldECR
• Strategic Trade Review

If you want to better detect sanctions-related risk in your organization, visit our website, read our latest whitepaper on sanctions, and get in touch with one of our experts – we’d love to hear from you.

The creation of the AMLA, the authority on money laundering in the European Union, is imminently upon us. And the critical question compliance professionals are wondering is: where will it live? Choosing an EU city to be the representative of 26 different cultures most certainly has needed careful thought and planning. The official location choice is set to be announced February 22, 2024, in the meantime we check in with Francis Marinier, Moody’s Analytics Financial Crime and Compliance Industry Practice Lead, to discuss his predictions.

Follow along to hear more about:

• What the AMLA is and why it was formed
• Why cities would want to be home to the AMLA
• What the European Parliament must consider when selecting a location
• Pros and cons of potential host cities such as Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris, and Dublin

For more information, visit the AML Intelligence website, where you can also check back in on February 22 for the final decision. To find out how Moody’s Analytics AML solutions can help your organization, please visit our website and get in touch.

Much has changed since we last visited the US Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) in March of 2023 on KYC Decoded. Now that FinCEN has officially rolled out its beneficial ownership database, what is the lay of the land for risk and compliance professionals? In this episode, we welcome back Jim Richards, former BSA officer, author, speaker, and CEO of RegTech Consulting to share his thoughts on where we are now, where there is room for improvement, and just how useful this database will be when combatting financial crime.

Key highlights of this educational discussion include:

• Jim’s time testifying before US congress in June of 2023
• The current limitations around access to the database
• The types of organizations that are exempt from the database
• The level of threat the database poses – or doesn’t pose – to financial criminals in both the short term and longer term
• Suggestions on how FinCEN should move forward

If you would like to find out more about the work Jim Richards does or the CTA, please check out our recommended resources:

• Jim Richards’s personal blog
• FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Information
• Moody’s content on Ultimate Beneficial Ownership

If you are looking for deeper insight into who you are doing business with, learn more on our website and feel free to get in touch.

There are plenty of shell companies formed for legitimate reasons. However, as recently uncovered in a major case in Singapore where 3 billion SGD of assets were frozen, shell companies can also be used for more nefarious purposes. This risk is not always easy to spot, especially when relying on manual, time-invasive processes.

In this episode KYC Decoded, host Alex Pillow welcomes Moody’s Analytics Product Manager, Kate Weymouth, and Head of the Financial Crime Practice Group for APAC and the Middle East, Choon Hong Chua.

Their dynamic and educational conversation around shell companies and their risks includes:

• Legitimate reasons for shell companies vs. illegitimate reasons
• The seven primary indicators of shell company risk
• A deeper look into the recent Singapore shell company scam
• How Moody’s Shell Company Indicator automates traditionally manual and time consuming processes with powerful data

For additional resources mentioned in this conversation, be sure to check out:

• FATF paper ‘Best Practices on Beneficial Ownership for Legal Persons’
• FATF paper, ‘Concealment of Beneficial Ownership’
• Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), ‘Effective Practices to Detect and Mitigate the Risk from Misuse of Legal Persons’
• ‘Risky business? The seven indicators of shell company risk’ data visualization
• Seven indicators of shell company risk blog

If you would like to know more about how Shell Company Indicator can better identify shell company risk in your organization, please visit our website and feel free to get in touch. We would love to hear from you.

Every year, on January 11, the US recognizes National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Human trafficking – currently a $150 billion industry – continues to be a pervasive threat around the globe, with criminals profiting from the enslavement of other people. This brings us to the obvious question: what can anti-financial crime and risk professionals do to make this world a safer place and help put an end to this abhorrent practice?

In this episode, we delve into this pressing issue with experts: Christopher Kemp, Director of Enterprise Operations at the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative; Chris Bagnall, Solutions Director at Quantexa; and Karim Rajwani, Head of Product at Sigma360. Their conversation sheds an important light on dealing with this crime, focusing on:

• The primary forms of human trafficking
• The staggering scale of the problem
• Strategies and solutions to stop it
• The role of data and technology in empowering professionals to dismantle trafficking networks
• Immediate, actionable steps we can implement to make a difference

To learn more about this important topic, we encourage you to explore these additional resources:

• Webinar, ‘Breaking Chains with AI: Advanced Detection of Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking Networks’
• ACAMS Article of the Year, ‘Understanding Human Trafficking’
• ACAMS Back to the Basics
• ACAMS Fighting Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking course
• Blog, ‘Decision Intelligence is the Key To Stopping Modern Slavery And Human Trafficking’
• The National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking (NAP)
• Wear Blue Day campaign
• Polaris website
• UN Office on Drugs and Crime Human Trafficking website
• Stop the Traffik website
•  US Department of State Understanding Human Trafficking fact sheet
• Freedom United website
• INTERPOL website
• Government of Canada Operational Alert
• Government of Canada Updated Indicators
• WeProtect Project Shadow

Find other ways your organization can help combat human trafficking - visit our website - and please feel free to get in touch; we would love to hear from you.

"Fighting financial crime" has long been a rallying cry within the AML profession, but could this way of thinking actually be doing us all a disservice? While an admirable goal for any compliance risk management program, it may actually be too limiting and overlook how the BSA Officer/MLRO role can also drive business strategy and growth.

In this episode of KYC Decoded, host Alex Pillow welcomes Vic Maculaitis, 3-time board-appointed BSA officer and founder of i3strategies, a consultancy that works to modernize the financial crime risk and compliance ecosystem. This provocative and candid conversation explores:

• The primary responsibility of a BSA officer
• Outcomes over checkboxes
• Compensation for compliance officers
• How generative AI plays into the future of the industry

For resources discussed during this episode, be sure to check out:

• The LinkedIn post that inspired this conversation
• Perspective, by i3strategies

If you’d like to level up your compliance program, visit our website and reach out for more information. We’d love to hear from you.

Our KYC origin series has traced the journeys of our diverse acquisitions, each of which has grown into a vital part of our KYC ecosystem.

But how have these distinct entities been integrated to operate as one?

In the grand finale of our KYC origin series, host Alex Pillow engages with Keith Berry, the KYC General Manager at Moody’s Analytics. They explore the expansion of the KYC unit, examining its evolution to become an industry-leading solution provider that has transformed risk and compliance.

They cover:

• The rationale for KYC and its inception
• The challenge of aligning to one mission and vision
• The ‘secret sauce’ of Moody’s Analytics KYC
• Transformational changes advancing the business
• The role of AI and machine learning in our product suite
• The future for KYC

Visit our website for more information on KYC and compliance!

With information on more than 472+ million entities worldwide, Orbis has become the most powerful comparable data resource on private companies. But the question isn't what happened, it's HOW?

In this episode of our KYC origin series, host Alex Pillow is joined by Bureau van Dijk and and Orbis veterans, Jon Hanmer and Ted Datta who discuss the evolution of this industry-defining database and how it became an indispensable tool for understanding the global corporate landscape.

Highlights from this episode include:

• The journey and growth of Bureau van Dijk the business
• Answering the "so what?" through the integration of data and insight
• Drivers stimulating the huge growth in Orbis for KYC and compliance use cases
• The importance of UBO to Orbis customers
• Infusing Orbis into the Moody’s Analytics family
• The future of Orbis for KYC within Moody and it's impact on tools such as Shell Company Indicator and Entity Verification API

Listen along and learn more about how Orbis can help you effectively manage risks and make better KYC decisions on our website.

In November 2022, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) sparked a seismic shift in the regulatory landscape with its ruling that the public should not have access to beneficial ownership registries.

Join us as we delve into the ripple effects of this ruling with our guests, Maíra Martini, research and policy expert on corrupt money flows at Transparency International, and Andres Knobel, lawyer and senior researcher at the Tax Justice Network, along with host, Alex Pillow.

This conversation sheds light on:

• Why the ruling may have came about
• The impacts the decision had on financial crime fighters and the bad actors they pursue
• How companies and KYC professionals can navigate through this new reality

For recommended resources that accompany this episode, check out:

• Roadmap to Effective Beneficial Ownership Transparency (REBOT)
• The state of play of beneficial ownership registration in 2022
• Reforming Global Standards on Beneficial Ownership Transparency campaign page

Visit out our website for more information on UBOs, and do not hesitate to get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

We’ve all heard rumblings about the potential bias-related risks AI can bring when models aren't properly trained or governed with plentiful, high-quality data. But, how many of us have paused to consider flipping this paradigm? Could our own bias on the subject of AI cause us to overlook how consciously-infused AI technologies could remove dangerous biases from our KYC and AML processes?

In this thought-provoking conversation, host Alex Pillow discusses the topic with AI and ethics expert, Anna Nicolis, senior manager at Braithwate, who specializes in helping global institutions with risk and compliance challenges.

Highlights of this episode include:

• A look at what the word “bias” really means
• The root causes of bias in society and within AI technologies
• Where AI has potential to help eliminate bias in the compliance lifecycle
• The role humans and data play in governing AI models

For a deeper dive into what was discussed, check out some of these recommended resources:

• Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) report, Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities for Compliance
• Information on the upcoming EU AI Act
• Future of Life Institute
• Research conducted by Moody’s Analytics on the attitudes, adoption, and use cases for AI in the world of risk management and compliance