For capital markets firms, account opening has never been more challenging. With the introduction of the USA Patriot Act and other anti-money laundering legislation in the United States and other countries, firms are facing new risks, rules, regulations and costs that jeopardize their time-to-market strategies.I'm very aware that the Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act and the associated anti-money laundering (AML) program require strict enforcement of Know Your Customer and appropriate due-diligence. My question is this:
For example, a large brokerage firm recently saw its account opening process go from an average of four to six hours to just under two days, resulting in higher costs and lower revenues.
Are financial services firms suffering more from...
- Strict requirements of AML?
- Inaccuracy and general inefficiency in the account opening process?
- Inability to find customer records for legal action or compliance audits?
It is in fact the inability to ensure the accuracy of customer application data at all, and its incorrect transcription into your business systems that is causing a far larger issue, both for servicing the account effectively and for external audits. And worse still, the inability to find customer records (such as applications, disclosures and agreements) leads to enormous financial penalties in both civil actions from individuals and from the regulators.
I'm interested in gaining more industry insight into this, to help the consultants help organizations target the real big issues.
