SWIFT, a co-operative of more than 10,000 financial institutions around the world, has launched a new business intelligence tool in its compliance services suite that will help banks monitor and address financial crime risk.

Through Compliance Analytics, banks will be able to analyse their own SWIFT traffic data to identify anomalies in behaviour, unusual patterns or trends in traffic flows, hidden relationships, and significant levels of activity in high-risk areas.

Compliance Analytics gives banks access to a single source of rich, standardised data, providing them with an overview of their SWIFT-based activity, including their subsidiaries’ activities and all their activity with correspondents.

The application will enable banks to identify and assess areas of risk, validate existing processes, and attain a global view of their SWIFT traffic. The application also allows banks to develop risk models, set alerts to highlight specific areas of risk within their business, and benchmark themselves against their industry peers.

“There are increasingly high expectations for financial institutions to implement policies and tools that will help identify and prevent financial crime activities,” said Luc Meurant, head of Banking Markets and Compliance Services at SWIFT.

“Compliance Analytics enables banks to analyse their existing SWIFT traffic data to detect spikes, outliers or possible policy breaches. This is a great new tool that can help alleviate some of the financial crime compliance challenges impacting the banking community.”

SWIFT’s Compliance Analytics is relevant to a broad audience within banks, including group compliance, AML, sanctions, correspondent banking, audit, and risk teams. It complements SWIFT’s existing Sanctions Screening and Sanctions Testing services, as well as its KYC Registry initiative which will go live at the end of the year.

Javier Pérez-Tasso, chief marketing officer at SWIFT said: “The launch of Compliance Analytics marks another milestone in SWIFT’s strategy to deliver innovative solutions in the financial crime compliance area.

“The new tool fits nicely with SWIFT’s existing Compliance Services portfolio and is another example of SWIFT’s commitment to helping the industry cope with new requirements in the area of financial crime compliance.” – TradeArabia News Service