Compliance Clarified – a podcast by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence

Bribery and corruption are set to head the agenda for law enforcers and corporate compliance departments in 2024, with a raft of new statutes and orders making for a particularly demanding environment. The UK's Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, passed in October 2023, is the most important British legal reform on economic crime, fraud, bribery and corruption in more than a century. In...

When it comes to crypto regulation the United States is a global outlier because the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Gary Gensler its chief executive, steadfastly believe crypto assets are securities as defined by current legislation. Where the SEC sees issues, it pursues crypto businesses through the courts and in turn, sometimes companies sue the regulator. Litigation, not regulatio...

In this episode, Lindsey Rogerson, senior editor at Regulatory Intelligence is joined by Henry Engler, senior editor, to discuss what is happening with climate reporting for U.S. financial firms. Uncertainty looms large over sustainability regulation at the Federal level. The possible return to the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump and two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and their likely effect...

In this episode, Trond Vagen, European correspondent at Regulatory Intelligence, is joined by Mike Cowan, senior regulatory intelligence expert, to discuss the challenges that face compliance officers in 2024. 2023 was a mix of geopolitical unrest and economic instability. The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continued to influence world economies. The year started with a mini banking cris...

The United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP28) is underway in Dubai. Past COPs have led to governmental initiatives that have real consequences for financial services businesses in their day-to-day operations. Transition plans and internationally agreed sustainable reporting standards are two examples of this. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, Alexander Robson, manag...

Former crypto chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried's guilty verdict stemming from the FTX fraud and collapse already seems like old news in a period of serious enforcement action related to crypto scams and industry misconduct. This tenth episode of season nine brings together Helen Chan, regulatory intelligence expert in Hong Kong and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in the UK to unpack themes emerging...

This episode features a special guest Michelle Giddings, head of anti-money laundering at the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Giddings joins Rachel Wolcott, senior editor at Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence in London. TRRI usually covers anti-money laundering (AML) strictly from a financial services viewpoint. However, with the focus on accountants' and law...

This episode of Compliance Clarified brings together Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London and Brett Wolf, senior anti-money laundering editor for the Americas to discuss Hamas, terrorist financing and the U.S. response to the 7 October attack. It has been a little over a month since Hamas fighters launched a brutal attack on Israel, unleashing a war, and leaving thousands of civilians dead. The...

Singaporean police conducted a nationwide raid (http://go-ri.tr.com/7Nm3aO) and arrested 10 ethnic-Chinese businessmen on Aug. 15. The police seized more than S$2.8 billion, making it one of the world's biggest money laundering cases (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/assets-seized-singapore-money-laundering-case-now-2-bln-minister-2023-10-03/). In this episode, Nathan Lynch, Asia managin...

Whistleblower cases have re-emerged in a growing share of enforcement actions brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal have emphasized the need to protect individuals who report misconduct. Last week, Grewal said, "The SEC's whistleblower program is a critical part of our enforcement efforts. Each year we receive th...

Australian financial institutions and their senior executives are preparing for a new Financial Accountability Regime, which will bring in a UK-style framework for senior management accountability. Under the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR), institutions will need to establish an accountability map for their directors and senior executives along with an array of conduct and compliance obligat...

The Financial Conduct Authority mistakenly told a whistleblower they were "no longer entitled to the protections offered under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998," (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/23/contents) after it gave permission for their name to be disclosed to their former employer. The mistake went uncorrected for six months and was overlooked by the Complaints Commissioner...

This episode of Compliance Clarified brings together Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence's regulatory expert in Hong Kong and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London to discuss what closer ties between North Korea and Russia mean for sanctions and compliance officials. Helen and Rachel delve into the growing entanglement between secondary sanctions risk and cryptocurrencies. Crypto exchanges and s...

Compliance Clarified's second episode of season 9 brings together Rachel Wolcott, senior editor and Brett Wolf, senior anti-money laundering editor for the Americas to discuss the state of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FINCEN) beneficial ownership register. The register has been years in the making as the United States has slowly come around to implementing the Financial Action Taskf...

Compliance Clarified's first episode of season 9 brings together Alexander Robson, managing editor, Helen Parry, senior regulatory expert and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor to discuss the state of UK Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) enforcement and markets oversight division. Does it have "all bases covered" as Therese Chambers, its new co-executive director for enforcement said in a speech? Or...

In episode 10 of season 8 of Compliance Clarified, Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence's Hong Kong-based expert and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London discuss artificial intelligence in compliance. To say there has been a lot of hype around AI and generative AI is an understatement. ChatGPT, in particular, has captured the public's imagination. It is simultaneously hailed as transformational...

The Financial Conduct Authority's much-trumpeted Consumer Duty comes into effect on July 31. An amendment to the Financial Services Act in 2021 in the House of Lords gave the regulator a year to bring in rules concerning the level of care firms provide to consumers. This turned into the Consumer Duty and last July the FCA set out its rules. The FCA has issued an unprecedented set of guidance on th...

The Australian arm of consulting firm PwC is embroiled in an unprecedented political scandal following revelations that senior staff sold confidential information on government tax reforms to its multinational clients. PwC is defending allegations that it engaged in a deliberate multi-year strategy to cover up a breach of confidentiality in the tax leak scandal. The form stands accused of "monetis...

U.S. banking regulators are homing in on more effective stress testing after admitting they were behind the curve in their supervision of Silicon Valley Bank. The bank collapsed in March, alongside Signature Bank, and was later joined by First Republic. Further problems are expected for smaller, regional banks, but regulators have to date seen off fears about a 2008-style financial crisis. In this...

Financial institutions in the United States are filing an exceptionally high volume of suspicious activity reports (SARs), with more than 3.6 million SARs submitted in 2022, a 57% increase over pre-pandemic (2019) levels. Additionally, suspicious activity reporting is on pace to set another annual record in 2023. A special report published recently by Thomson Reuters takes a deeper dive into the d...

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says it views whistleblowers as a valuable source of intelligence. But whistleblowers feel far from valued by the FCA, according to the findings of the regulator's own survey. In 2019, the FCA board commissioned a review of its whistle-blowing offering, which was delayed by the pandemic and published in May this year. The self-assessment found whistleblower...

Firms need to re-engineer their anti-money laundering (AML) systems and controls to refocus on know-your-customer (KYC) processes to prevent the inevitable pile-up of transaction monitoring alerts. Firms' pivot to digital onboarding has prioritised speed over collecting enough information to determine whether transactions are suspicious. It has created an inefficient, expensive process where AML a...

Financial services firms in the Asia-Pacific region have been shocked out of their complacency in the past year, with scams, frauds and other cyber-related crimes increasing exponentially. In Australia alone, consumers reported a record A$3 billion in losses last year — up from A$850m just two years earlier. The rapid pivot to digital financial services and non-face-to-face business during the pan...

Compliance officers are operating with limited sets of resources while simultaneously managing a diverse and expanding range of subject areas where the volume of regulatory change is expected to increase. The 14th annual Cost of Compliance, published by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence, found costs are expected to increase with difficulties recruiting appropriately skilled staff also report...

Anti-money laundering (AML) control failings at Santander Bank UK opened the door to a financial intermediary with links to Colombian drug cartels operating in Britain. Beltcastle, a payments service provider, is "Customer A" featured in the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) final notice in December 2022 to illustrate the failures behind Santander's £107 million fine. Beltcastle, which was autho...