Anti-money laundering/trade-based money laundering risk assessment strategies – action or re-action focused?

Mohammed Ahmad Naheem

Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2019, vol. 22, issue 4, 721-733

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to discuss whether most anti-money laundering (AML) risk assessment strategies within the banking and financial services sector are reactionary focused and/or whether it should be possible to predict where increased costs and resources need to be targeted in future AML risk processes. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reviewed research findings from the researchers own study on trade-based money laundering (TBML) and also survey results from the KPMG Global Anti-Money Laundering Survey (2014), along with academic discussion papers. Findings - The paper concluded that risk assessment strategies were still largely responsive, and this left banks exposed to two factors – not recognising risk that they were not assessing for and, second, being challenged legally as new cases emerged in the court systems from victims of ML and terrorism crimes. Practical implications - The practical implications affect the resources and costs assigned to risk assessment strategies and called for a more holistic approach that was forward thinking from the bank’s perspective rather than reactionary focused and working from the regulators’s agenda. Social implications - Any improvements in detection of AML and counter-terrorism financing has broader social outcomes. Originality/value - The originality is the subject matter of AML risk assessment strategies and the input from TBML/AML experts from across the globe that contributed to the author’s research survey and interviews. These results have been analysed along with other research and the current academic discussion on this topic.

Keywords: Regulation; Compliance; Banking; Risk assessment; Trade-based money laundering; Anti-money laundering; AML risk assessment strategies; TBML (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jmlcpp:jmlc-01-2016-0006

DOI: 10.1108/JMLC-01-2016-0006

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Money Laundering Control is currently edited by Dr Li Hong Xing and Prof Barry Rider

More articles in Journal of Money Laundering Control from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().