Standard Chartered taps Quantexa to boost AML controls
Standard Chartered is aiming to boost its financial crime detection systems by partnering with contextual intelligence firm Quantexa.
Standard Chartered has been fined heavily over for its AML controls this year
The software company will be looking to support Standard Chartered’s anti-money laundering (AML), anti-fraud, and counter terrorist financing (CTF) systems through the use of dynamic entity resolution, network analytics and contextual data.
Quantexa claims that the bank will now be able to conduct “complex financial thematic investigations more efficiently and effectively”, and “see a holistic view of investigations, providing a deeper understanding of the trends and risks across billions of data points from more than 40 countries”.
Standard Chartered head of FCC controls strategy and innovation, Praveen Jain, says: “Quantexa’s solution consolidates information from multiple sources, leverages advanced analytics, visualisation and contextual output.”
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“This not only simplifies tasks for the analyst, but also helps them understand the flow of funds, see the relationships between entities and identify otherwise hidden linkages that may have been difficult to establish previously”.
For Vishal Marria, CEO and founder of Quantex, the partnership “is a true testament to [the bank’s] desire to tackle and disrupt financial crime globally.”
Standard Chartered accrued fines of $1.1 billion in April as a result of AML breaches involving Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Sudan and Syria.
The bank was punished by the US Department of Justice with a $947 million penalty, and then fined £102.2 million by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The latter is the second-largest penalty ever levied by the UK watchdog for AML failures.
The FCA wrote that it found “significant shortcomings in Standard Chartered’s own internal assessments of the adequacy of its AML controls, its approach towards identifying and mitigating material money laundering risks and its escalation of money laundering risks.”
Standard Chartered has originally set aside $900 million at the start of 2019 as an insurance against penalties and fines it expected to receive from regulators over the course of the year.
