“Two Leading Financial Services - Service Providers team up in Risk Based KYC/AML Compliance Offering”

Lucia Hiriart Rodriguez is the wife of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and she might not be very happy about what happened this week in Nassau when two of the leading financial services - service providers teamed up and launched a new generic compliance solution to identify PEPs, terrorists, money launderers and other high risk entities.

Data Systems International Ltd (DSI) announced that it has established a strategic alliance with Miami based WorldCompliance, a global leader in Know Your Customer (KYC) data and information services. “Comprehensive KYC and AML compliance is a two part solution” explained Bruce Raine, Managing Director of DSI, and we have successfully developed the corporate and documentary side of the solution which we call IPBS Compliance Manager, and have been seeking, for some time now, a pre-eminent information service that can deliver a comprehensive and easily searchable database of individuals and institutions, that pose risk to financial institutions.

“The reason that we decided to partner with WorldCompliance is that we found its quality and reputation to be the best in the market”, says Raine. “With more than 600,000 individuals and companies known or suspected to be terrorists, money launderers, drug dealers or other risky clients, as well as PEPs (Politically Exposed People), their coverage is unmatched and the profiles show an extremely high percentage of birth dates in combination with portrait photographs. This data quality saves the user time and money, when reviewing matches between their client names and names on the WorldCompliance list”, says Raine.

One of the unique features of this offering is that banks do not have to use the internet to screen their clients against terror lists, like OFAC, FBI, European Union or to screen for Politically Exposed Persons amongst their clientele, such as Pinochet and his wife, which caused so much trouble for Riggs Bank. Any financial institution is now in a position to perform an extensive KYC check, without worrying about privacy issues.

Another unique feature of WorldCompliance is customization. “DSI is a perfect fit for us,” said Dirk Mohrmann, president of WorldCompliance. “Through their IPBS Compliance Manager, we can offer a menu of over 300 enforcement lists to choose from, including OFAC, US Securities and Exchange Commission, British Columbia Securities Commission, World Bank, to name but a few regulatory agencies, plus PEPs, their relatives and associates”. Banks can select the type and number of lists that they want to screen against, starting at less than two thousand dollars for the basic module.

In a recent US Senate report it was alleged that Riggs Bank tried to hide the Pinochet account from automatic detection by renaming it to A. Ugarte. “This would not work with IPBS, because our search logic would detect the last name as part of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s full name and spot the account on the fly,” said Bruce Raine.

“We are very excited about this product” says Raine, “we believe that it is a dynamite (if that doesn’t sound too terroristic) solution”, and hopefully it will help some of our financial institutions spend more time providing their core services to clients and less time walking the compliance policeman’s beat. The response from the local banks has been great and we have already signed up the first clients.