Antigua and Barbuda
Bankers Should Pre-empt Online Fraud
- Details
- Banking
- Tuesday, 17 August 2010 06:55
An Antiguan banker says financial institutions have to pre-empt would-be fraudsters as they seek to protect their new products and services. Marlon Rawlins, general manager of Scotiabank in Antigua & Barbuda, says if these fraudsters succeed, it would lead to more money laundering, loss of revenue and damaged reputations.
Speaking at a two-day anti-money laundering and fraud prevention conference in St John’s, Rawlins said mobile fraud is on the rise, and financial companies have to be aware before hackers strike.
“The financial industry's responsibility to identify, monitor, measure and control money-laundering risk affects its entire business process,” Rawlins told an audience of bankers, financial services executives, insurance and general business managers and law enforcement officials.
“Failure to do so is loaded with risk,” he added. “Such risks include operational, reputational, and financial risk as a result of regulatory penalties; forced operational and policy changes; loss in revenues, stealing from frozen assets, and loss of customer base because of negative publicity.”
Rawlins echoed a pre-conference plea from chief organiser Kem Warner that financial institutions need to “develop policies and procedures to combat money laundering which include the duty to be aware of trends and adaptations in which money laundering is carried out.”
He said “this most difficult aspect of this responsibility is a financial institution's ability to pre-empt new criminal behaviour and to proactively implement protocols before the criminal behaviour occurs. It is like trying to guess what new unknown disease will affect us in the next year or next two years. The truth is, much of the emergence of the new disease frequently determines the direction of medical science."
Rawlins noted, “The use of technology continues to drive innovation in the financial industry, and with innovations comes the new money laundering risk. In recent times, there has been a proliferation of new and increased technology in banking, and this has led to money laundering risk in areas such as funds transfers to stored value cards including prepaid debit cards; also in e-commerce, and now the latest technology which is called m-commerce (which is the use of both mobile phone technology as well internet payments)."
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