Ensuring a robust approach to financial crime

The challenge

A global financial services/payments business with massive revenues and operations in over 30 countries, tasked us with delivering their Financial Crime transformation programme - a three and a half year, £25m initiative.

Although experienced in delivering small-medium scale change, our client lacked the skills and internal capability necessary to implement such a complex strategic programme. What’s more, they felt that a level of independence would be beneficial in managing multiple suppliers from the technology and professional services sectors.

Approach

Working in close partnership with the C suite and frontline SMEs across over 30 countries (including high risk, emerging markets), we led a multi-year, multi-faceted programme designed to increase customer and partner confidence in the client’s capabilities and management of financial risk.

We launched the programme with clear and concise objectives and ensured all parties understood and documented their mandate.

Because of the complexities involved in implementing a global financial crime system, and the associated revisions to SOPs and multi-channel online services, we needed to break delivery down into a number of manageable blocks. Using a gated approach, we maintained sponsorship throughout and ensured that a one off / high risk single event was avoided. This tried and tested approach meant the sponsor benefited at each phase and, in effect, earned value as it incurred capital spend.

By managing third parties extremely carefully and closely, all commitments in the respective statement of works were met and evidence and KPIs supported the outputs.

Our experience of relative large-scale change programmes in this space meant we could identify early warning indicators for Red Flag items, so the client could act earlier in the life-cycle to prevent undesirable outcomes.

A multi-year program with exec teams across 30 countries worldwide

Impact

risk elimination

Extensive risk to financial loss eliminated

resulting from enhanced fraud protection, adherence to regulatory requirements and the related reduction in penalties and sanctions
cost reduction

Reduced operational costs

of investigating and researching suspicious activities with a combination of enhanced technology and standard control procedures
customer experience

Measurable and enhanced customer experience

led to fewer disruptions to retail and online services
responsiveness

Faster responsiveness

due to enhancements that allow the client to respond to changes in the business and global regulatory environment
Level of trust

Trust increased

with critically important existing partners, and faster onboarding for new partners using the new technology