Regulatory Compliance and Broker-Dealers

Fortent provides the brokerage industry with effective, efficient and proven solutions that meet regulatory requirements, streamline operations and combat financial crime.

• Know Your Customer (KYC): Smart. Simple. Fast.
  From customer verification to in-depth customer association analysis and look-backs, Fortent KYC automated, risk-based solution is the leading choice to meet BSA and Patriot Act requirements.
• Anti-Money Laundering (AML): Effective. Efficient. Proven. 
  Fortent AML is the world’s leading risk-based transaction monitoring solution.
• Regulatory Information Management:
  Fortent Inform is the only information service that creates cost and operational efficiencies. Dedicated to covering compliance and regulatory news and legislation, Fortent Inform streamlines the gathering and dissemination process and provides auditing and reporting functions for regulators.
• Regulatory News and Guidance:
  Provides up-to-the minute coverage of AML news.
• Professional Training and Certification:
  ACAMS is the premier organization for the AML compliance community, providing training certification, and networking for compliance professionals.
• Conferences and Seminars:
  ACAMS and Alert Global Media conduct the world's leading compliance events on six continents.

Risks and rewards in the AML process

Recent fines and disciplinary actions in the securities industry raise the stakes for broker-dealers in implementing anti-money laundering procedures. As the SEC, FinCEN, and FINRA, the industry's newly merged NASD/NYSE SRO take a hard line with brokerages in their regulatory exams, broker-dealers can be penalized, simply for having inadequate systems and processes in place – whether or not actual money laundering even occurred.

Federal and international regulatory bodies have made transparency in securities markets their priority, charging broker-dealers to track money laundering across the full range of financial products through:

• Customer identification programs – CIP
• Behavior-detection procedures – Transaction Monitoring
• Suspicious activity reporting – SAR-SF

Along with this heightened compliance burden, however, come distinct opportunities in the marketplace – if an institution uses the right AML tools:

• Increased customer confidence in your institution and your products
• Improved abilities to detect risk and avoid costly errors
• Better investment insight into the risks and rewards of new products and geographies, grounded with improved safeguards from your compliance systems

Fortent's Risk and compliance technology for Brokerage

Fortent® KYC - Simple. Smart. Fast.

Tackling the CIP challenge
From USA PATRIOT Act to OFAC regulations, broker-dealers are required to implement strict due diligence for all new and existing customers, paying particular attention to correspondent, private banking, and foreign banking accounts. But with the exponential growth in the number of accounts and the geographic dispersion of clients, broker-dealers face significant operational hurdles in collecting, aggregating, and maintaining appropriate data on all customers. The existence of multiple divisions within an organization, each offering separate sales and distribution channels in a wide range of markets, complicates the information flow and can cause important links to be missed.

From data overload to information insight
Fortent KYC provides an enterprise-wide solution to customer due diligence, collecting vast amounts of data and information input from multiple sources and aggregating them into a single, streamlined system. As the system evaluates customer information flowing in from branch offices around the world, Fortent KYC paints a complete picture of the real risk that an entity poses to an organization.

Advanced screening
By measuring customer profiles against OFAC lists, third-party resources (such as the Internet), watch lists, and internal databases, Fortent KYC establishes an exceptionally rigorous standard for CIP, Customer Due Diligence, and Enhanced Due Diligence in the broker-dealer community.

Fortent® AML - Effective. Efficient. Proven.

Managing complexity in transaction monitoring and reporting
Along with the rise in transaction volume has come an increase in transaction complexity for brokers around the world. As financial instruments are being continually refined and developed for new markets, institutions are required to put transactions under a more powerful microscope and constantly monitor them for suspicious activity.

No wasted resources
Fortent's best-in-class transaction monitoring system is used by a range of widely-diversified financial institutions throughout the world and offers brokerages the effectiveness and efficiency required for AML compliance in today's market. With its rigorous monitoring of even the most complicated transactions, Fortent delivers the comprehensiveness that compliance officers and AML examiners demand while weeding out the false positives that drain time and resources away from revenue-producing activity.

Full coverage for all products
Fortent provides brokerages with the assurance that all bases are covered, offering full coverage of all financial instruments, including equities, options, fixed income, derivatives, currency exchanges, money markets, mutual funds, and trusts.

Fortent® KYC and Fortent® AML

Reporting and investigations made easy
Fortent can help streamline the audit function and simplify the reporting process for SAR-SFs, CTRs, FBARs, and CMIRs. Drawing on our years of experience working with institutions and regulators, our reporting tools have been expressly designed to minimize the pain of regulatory exams.

Regulatory Information Management

Fortent® Inform

Manage information overload

Financial institutions can spend up to one-third of their compliance budget on accumulating and disseminating accurate and necessary information to employees. Moreover, without standardized information-gathering tools and distribution processes, individuals and groups in your organization might not be consistent in the way they interpret and act on regulatory events – exposing your business to risk including:

• Too much information from too many sources – Are you overlooking what's important?
• Everyone interpreting 'legs and regs' differently – Is your process inefficient and inconsistent?
• Information flow isn't tracked – Do you know how informed your organization is?

Fortent Inform is the ideal information workflow tool for any organization looking to save money and time on compliance activities.

Cut costs while reducing risk

By aggregating information from various regulatory bodies and streaming content to all appropriate compliance and business functions within your organization, Fortent Inform increases the compliance productivity while lowering costs. Incorporating Fortent Inform into the workflow should save 10-15% of the overall compliance costs for an institution and reduce regulatory risk.

Track information flow to employees

Failing to inform all staff of ongoing changes in legal and regulatory requirements puts the entire institution at risk. Fortent Inform's audit and tracking function is an integral part of an enterprise-wide risk management strategy, ensuring that all employees are working with the right information at the right time. To learn more about Fortent Inform, click here

Regulatory News and Guidance

moneylaundering.com® and lavadodinero.com®

As the ultimate information resource on money laundering, moneylaundering.com provides up-to-the-minute news and analysis of regulatory and enforcement actions for all compliance professionals.

Available as an individual subscription or as an organizational site license for multiple users, moneylaundering.com (and its Spanish-language version, lavadodinero.com) provides a vast, electronic searchable library of laws, regulations, case documents, and expert commentary on the issues vital to anyone affected by money laundering compliance.

Money Laundering Alert®

Launched in 1989, Money Laundering Alert was the first publication dedicated to covering legislative, regulatory, and enforcement developments surrounding money laundering in the United States and around the world. Money Laundering Alert provides practical compliance guidance and case studies and is used as a training tool by financial institutions, insurance companies, and government agencies.

For more information, go to www.moneylaundering.com

Professional Training and Certification

ACAMS®

Growing from an expanding need to identify professionals with clearly defined AML expertise, the Association of Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) is a membership-based organization that serves as a platform for career development and networking for AML professionals.

An independently-managed division of Fortent, ACAMS offers the Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) designation to individuals who successfully complete a rigorous examination designed by industry leaders and an independent testing firm.

As the gold standard in AML certification, the CAMS credential enables financial institutions, businesses, and government agencies to identify experts in the field from which they may recruit personnel who meet certified standards.

For more information, go to www.acams.org

Conferences and Seminars 

ACAMS® and Alert Global Media events 

ACAMS and Alert Global Media, an independently-operating division of Fortent, offer the world’s leading AML seminars and conferences. In addition to Alert Global Media’s renowned International Money Laundering Conference and Exhibition held each year in Florida, ACAMS hosts the foremost regional AML events in Latin America, Europe, and, most recently, the Middle East. These events have become part of the required curriculum for the world’s leading AML professionals. 

Throughout the year, ACAMS conducts numerous seminars and webinars, providing ongoing education and networking opportunities for AML professionals in over 30 countries. 

For more information, go to www.moneylaundering.com or www.acams.org 

To find out more information about how Fortent's brokerage solutions can transform your compliance practices, click here.