Case Study
Anti-Money Laundering Review Backlog Acceleration
Risk
Client
Fortune 100 Financial Services Institution
Services
Financial Crimes Compliance, Regulatory Program Compliance
Project Overview
Corresponding with a spike in business, the Client experienced a growing backlog of customers requiring Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) reviews which not only impacted its ability to bring on new customers timely but also became noticed by the regulators – with a mandate following to diminish the backlog in a tight timeframe. Due to process inefficiencies and staffing and productivity levels disproportionate to the expanding need, the Client needed to identify areas to improve review quality and reduce risk in order to meet business and regulatory objectives. The Client sought help identifying the most efficient path forward. Reference Point (RP) deployed a team with AML/KYC domain expertise to support and enable the EDD team(s) in all efforts to remediate outstanding case issues while building new capabilities that are scalable long-term. In addition, RP used advanced analytics to evaluate positive and negative trends within the pipeline and guide recommendations based on historical data.
Solution
- Reference Point deployed a team led by former JP Morgan Chase AML Executives, paired with experienced AML data analysts, to immediately analyze and segregate the existing backlog of EDD cases and identify key case trends as well as strategic opportunities for risk acceptances or to prioritize high risk accounts.
- The team introduced a Fraud Restriction Validation process to ensure frozen accounts are removed from the EDD Queue, ultimately reducing the ongoing backlog and level of effort required by reviewers.
- Reference Point also helped identify and remediate the root cause of continued productivity woes and the uptick in daily case volume by evaluating reviewer metrics and conducting stakeholder interviews.
- Additionally, RP provided surge support resources to the AML Risk EDD team to conduct detailed case reviews and help quickly escalate high risk customers.
Impact
- Reference Point provided the client with data-driven analysis and a proposed methodology for prioritizing cases and streamlining the review of low-risk cases to reduce backlog and maximize efficiency for specific reviews moving forward.
- With the support of Reference Point dedicated strategic advisors, the Client was able to mitigate regulatory risk by leveraging AML/KYC best practices and lessons learned across the industry. These insights helped guide the organization towards critical objectives in a tightly constrained timeline.
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