There are all those sayings about how the optimist and the pessimist encounter the world, starting with the old "glass half-full or half-empty" adage. The 33rd Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime offered fodder aplenty for both world views earlier this month in the United Kingdom.
If you attended the ACAMS moneylaundering.com conference in Hollywood, FL this past week, you were certain to hear concerns by compliance officers about Russian sanctions and, when the regulators weren't standing nearby, complaints that AML requirements aren't getting any easier.
A number of large U.S. and international banks are dropping customer accounts and services tied to high-risk geographical regions and lines of business in response to regulatory pressure, including enforcement actions.