PricewaterhouseCoopers will pay $25 million and revise its consulting practices after removing incriminating findings from a 2008 report drafted for Japan's largest bank, a New York State regulator said.
Recent regulatory guidance on banks use of consultants for anti-money laundering remediation work places a renewed focus on the personal connections that can affect the independence of consultants, according to compliance professionals.
Financial consultants are weighing ways to shield their auditors from undue influence by clients in the wake of a monetary settlement by New York State and congressional testimony by federal regulators.
With an American anti-tax evasion law set to take effect and plans for another European Union directive to fight money laundering, French banks will soon have to know their clients better, according to Carolina Ceballos, a professor at the University of Strasbourg.
U.S. lawmakers called on regulators Thursday to review potential conflicts of interest involving third-party companies hired to evaluate banks' compliance with lending, capitalization and anti-money laundering rules.
Intended to ensure strong Bank Secrecy Act programs, compliance audits can nonetheless have an unintended consequence: they can get banks in trouble, say consultants.
New York's $340 million sanctions settlement with Standard Chartered Plc will likely serve as a model for similar compliance-related agreements, even as it deters some banks from obtaining state licenses.
A London-based nonprofit group is calling for investigations of at least five financial institutions over their correspondent links to a Central Asian bank at the center of a money laundering probe.
Small brokerage firms will no longer be exempted from undertaking annual independent testing of anti-money laundering programs following a rule change approved last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Compliance officers at smaller financial institutions say that meeting the independent testing requirements of an AML program can be difficult. But current and former regulators say there are ways to keep the entire audit or portions of it in-house, a cost savings, if institutions are creative.
Auditors that don't have experience with Bank Secrecy Act rules and regulations can make costly oversights and errors that may lead to enforcement actions or painful demands from examiners down the road, compliance professionals say.
Account history reviews are often expensive but their lengths can be negotiated, according to KPMG Forensic principal Darren Donovan.