In this episode Lindsey Rogerson, senior editor, is joined by Trond Vagen, senior editor for European Financial Markets Regulation, to discuss the mounting sustainability-related workload for bank and investment compliance officers. Trond discusses the European Central Bank’s (ECB) expectations for banks to accurately assess the climate and environmental risks on their balance sheets. With just nine months remaining before the deadline and the possibility of daily fines, increased capital...

In this episode Rachel Wolcott, senior editor, welcomes special guest Justine Walker to the podcast. Justine is the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists' (ACAMS) global head–sanctions, compliance, and risk and its vice-president for thought leadership. She is an expert on sanctions, counterterrorism, and financial crime she has held specialist positions within the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, HM Treasury, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UK...

Welcome to Compliance Clarified's 100th episode! This week Rachel Wolcott, senior editor and Lindsey Rogerson, senior editor in London speak to a special guest Ann Francke Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute in London, a professional body for management and leadership. This International Women's Day podcast looks at the backlash that's hit efforts to get women into the workplace and on an equal footing. We focus on financial services, but this is an issue that reverberates...

In Episode 6 of Season 10, Helen Parry, senior Regulatory Intelligence Expert speaks to Rachel Wolcott, senior editor about the UK Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) recent success in securing an insider dealing conviction. The FCA's enforcement co-heads—Therese Chambers and Steve Smart --have used this conviction to reassert the regulator's intention to get tough on insider dealing. A previous enforcement head said the same thing in 2015. Rachel asks Helen what is different this...

Industrial scale money laundering originating in Southeast Asia's Mekong region has gone global. It's the infrastructure that handles the proceeds of pig butchering scams, child pornography, trade in human body parts, illegal gambling, drug trafficking and people trafficking. Cross-border crime networks fueled by cryptocurrency is linking the world's most dangerous criminals and allowing them to scale up and automate money laundering. This activity is increasingly linked to terrorist...

Bribery and corruption are set to head the agenda for law enforcers and corporate compliance departments in 2024, with a raft of new statutes and orders making for a particularly demanding environment. The UK's Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, passed in October 2023, is the most important British legal reform on economic crime, fraud, bribery and corruption in more than a century. In the United States, the Treasury Department in December 2023 outlined plans to target corruption...

When it comes to crypto regulation the United States is a global outlier because the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Gary Gensler its chief executive, steadfastly believe crypto assets are securities as defined by current legislation. Where the SEC sees issues, it pursues crypto businesses through the courts and in turn, sometimes companies sue the regulator. Litigation, not regulation, is how spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETF) came to launch in mid-January despite...

In this episode, Lindsey Rogerson, senior editor at Regulatory Intelligence is joined by Henry Engler, senior editor, to discuss what is happening with climate reporting for U.S. financial firms. Uncertainty looms large over sustainability regulation at the Federal level. The possible return to the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump and two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and their likely effect on climate rules in the financial sector are discussed. At the State level it is a different...

In this episode, Trond Vagen, European correspondent at Regulatory Intelligence, is joined by Mike Cowan, senior regulatory intelligence expert, to discuss the challenges that face compliance officers in 2024. 2023 was a mix of geopolitical unrest and economic instability. The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continued to influence world economies. The year started with a mini banking crisis as Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic, Signature Bank and Credit Suisse all failed resulting...

The United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP28) is underway in Dubai. Past COPs have led to governmental initiatives that have real consequences for financial services businesses in their day-to-day operations. Transition plans and internationally agreed sustainable reporting standards are two examples of this. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, Alexander Robson, managing editor of Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence, is joined from Dubai by Lindsey Rogerson,...

Former crypto chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried's guilty verdict stemming from the FTX fraud and collapse already seems like old news in a period of serious enforcement action related to crypto scams and industry misconduct. This tenth episode of season nine brings together Helen Chan, regulatory intelligence expert in Hong Kong and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in the UK to unpack themes emerging from recent initiatives from Chinese law enforcement, Europol, and U.S. regulators as well as...

This episode features a special guest Michelle Giddings, head of anti-money laundering at the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Giddings joins Rachel Wolcott, senior editor at Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence in London. TRRI usually covers anti-money laundering (AML) strictly from a financial services viewpoint. However, with the focus on accountants' and law firms' role in preventing financial crime like money laundering and sanctions evasion since the...

This episode of Compliance Clarified brings together Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London and Brett Wolf, senior anti-money laundering editor for the Americas to discuss Hamas, terrorist financing and the U.S. response to the 7 October attack. It has been a little over a month since Hamas fighters launched a brutal attack on Israel, unleashing a war, and leaving thousands of civilians dead. The attack took Israel and the world by surprise and raised questions about whether enough...

Singaporean police conducted a nationwide raid (http://go-ri.tr.com/7Nm3aO) and arrested 10 ethnic-Chinese businessmen on Aug. 15. The police seized more than S$2.8 billion, making it one of the world's biggest money laundering cases (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/assets-seized-singapore-money-laundering-case-now-2-bln-minister-2023-10-03/). In this episode, Nathan Lynch, Asia managing editor, and Yixiang Zeng, reporter in Singapore, discuss how the case began back in 2021 when...

Whistleblower cases have re-emerged in a growing share of enforcement actions brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal have emphasized the need to protect individuals who report misconduct. Last week, Grewal said, "The SEC's whistleblower program is a critical part of our enforcement efforts. Each year we receive thousands of whistleblower tips, and throughout the history of the program, those tips have...

Australian financial institutions and their senior executives are preparing for a new Financial Accountability Regime, which will bring in a UK-style framework for senior management accountability. Under the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR), institutions will need to establish an accountability map for their directors and senior executives along with an array of conduct and compliance obligations. The object of the FAR is to impose a tougher accountability framework for the banking,...

The Financial Conduct Authority mistakenly told a whistleblower they were "no longer entitled to the protections offered under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998," (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/23/contents) after it gave permission for their name to be disclosed to their former employer. The mistake went uncorrected for six months and was overlooked by the Complaints Commissioner in August. In this episode, Alexander Robson and Lindsey Rogerson discuss the regulator's...

This episode of Compliance Clarified brings together Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence's regulatory expert in Hong Kong and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London to discuss what closer ties between North Korea and Russia mean for sanctions and compliance officials. Helen and Rachel delve into the growing entanglement between secondary sanctions risk and cryptocurrencies. Crypto exchanges and services—Tornado Cash, Bitzlato-- have been sanctioned or closed for helping sanctioned...

Compliance Clarified's second episode of season 9 brings together Rachel Wolcott, senior editor and Brett Wolf, senior anti-money laundering editor for the Americas to discuss the state of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FINCEN) beneficial ownership register. The register has been years in the making as the United States has slowly come around to implementing the Financial Action Taskforce's (FATF) recommendations 24 and 25. Those address transparency and beneficial ownership of...

Compliance Clarified's first episode of season 9 brings together Alexander Robson, managing editor, Helen Parry, senior regulatory expert and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor to discuss the state of UK Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) enforcement and markets oversight division. Does it have "all bases covered" as Therese Chambers, its new co-executive director for enforcement said in a speech? Or is its approach and execution of enforcement cases, to use the words of an Upper Tribunal judge,...

In episode 10 of season 8 of Compliance Clarified, Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence's Hong Kong-based expert and Rachel Wolcott, senior editor in London discuss artificial intelligence in compliance. To say there has been a lot of hype around AI and generative AI is an understatement. ChatGPT, in particular, has captured the public's imagination. It is simultaneously hailed as transformational technology and a weapon of mass destruction. So what's in it for compliance officers? Helen...

The Financial Conduct Authority's much-trumpeted Consumer Duty comes into effect on July 31. An amendment to the Financial Services Act in 2021 in the House of Lords gave the regulator a year to bring in rules concerning the level of care firms provide to consumers. This turned into the Consumer Duty and last July the FCA set out its rules. The FCA has issued an unprecedented set of guidance on the duty. In this episode of Compliance Clarified, managing editor Alex Robson talks to senior...

The Australian arm of consulting firm PwC is embroiled in an unprecedented political scandal following revelations that senior staff sold confidential information on government tax reforms to its multinational clients. PwC is defending allegations that it engaged in a deliberate multi-year strategy to cover up a breach of confidentiality in the tax leak scandal. The form stands accused of "monetising" confidential information that it obtained as a consultant to the government on laws to...