Editor’s note: European Connect is a section in the ACAMS Today magazine that will update members on ACAMS news and activities in Europe.
Lately, the EU has been ramping up its focus on preventing financial crime, with regulators creating entirely new paradigms for organizations operating here and the press reporting the industry’s news on its front pages, not the financial ones.
Particularly challenging for organizations in Europe is aligning their operations across the multiple jurisdictions in which they are based. At the time of this writing, there are indications that the U.K. will enforce a different sanctions regime to the EU post-Brexit that will increase the complexity of managing sanctions risk—an already complicated area.
This year, the European Parliament has also rejected a blacklist of countries prepared by the European Commission several times for relying too heavily on the Financial Action Task Force’s own blacklist. Parliamentarians have recommended the Commission take more of a ‘zero-sum’ approach to drawing this up, as they believe it should be expanded (nationals from these countries will then be subject to greater checks when trying to do business in Europe).
However, an overarching trend we are seeing is transparency. Regulators are demanding it and organizations are struggling to balance that requirement alongside strict data protection regimes. The Data Protection panel at our 2017 European Conference was well attended and highly rated as attendees heard how big European organizations are managing that push and pull.
Finally, I wanted to give you the dates of our upcoming events in Europe:
- Anti-Financial Crime Symposium–Ireland
Dublin, October 19, 2017 - Anti-Financial Crime Symposium–Nordics
Copenhagen, November 16, 2017 - KYC/CDD Boot Camp
London, December 7, 2017
Our European Chapters also continue to organize exciting networking and learning events, so I hope to have the chance to meet all of you somewhere in Europe soon.
