As authorities across the globe crack down on financial crime and the funding of terrorism, financial institutions face a significant challenge in meeting the increasingly stringent requirements set by Regulators. Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations, such as South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA), are being introduced worldwide to fight financial crime, including money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing activities. FICA, introduced in 2003, brought South Africa in line with similar legislation in Europe and North America.

South African consulting and technology company, BSG, has throughout its almost two decades of experience gained invaluable insight into the financial services industry, with a particular focus on strategically designing process and operating model improvements to maximise value to the business. With the focus of so many banks turning to their internal Compliance and Financial Crime functions, BSG was contracted by a leading global bank to assist with the design of an optimised TOM for its Financial Crime function of its African operations.

As part of the project, which begun in 2014, BSG’s business consultants facilitated the drafting of the TOM, which allowed the business to highlight opportunities for improvement. The programme, designed to tactically fix and strategically build the Financial Crime function, is currently expected to run until 2018.

The new TOM is expected to have far-reaching implications, not only for the Financial Crime function, but also for the Bank’s operations as a whole, and its standing with the Regulators. In order to fully implement the redesigned TOM, the Bank will need greater visibility, across the business, of customer records, meaning that should an existing customer wish to make use of a new product, compliance documentation will be readily available to all relevant business units. This will ensure that the Bank is better positioned to deal with the needs and requirements of its customers, going forward.

BSG is uniquely positioned, through its broad-based financial sector experience to provide a holistic, end-to-end solution to its clients. This coupled with the agile nature of its consulting approach, endows BSG with the ability to understand the intricacies of the local environments in which the Bank is operating, and advise, and execute strategy accordingly. All-too-often the approach is too prescriptively advocate the implementation of solutions developed by first-world countries, with first-world considerations. The other side of this coin is for consultants to, without question or deliberation, implement solutions provided to them. BSG’s consultants are able to strike a balance between these two extremes; ensuring that interventions of this nature take cognisance of the nuances unique to African markets, while delivering maximum value to the global Bank.

This experiential dichotomy affords BSG a unique edge, allowing it to simultaneously assist the Compliance and Financial Crime functions, as well as the business as a whole. When designing a TOM, BSG consultants take into account the roles and responsibilities of both the business and the functions supporting it. By taking this approach, BSG guides the business in building a capability that, through people, process and system adjustments, supports the Compliance and Financial Crime functions, and helps the functions to support optimised business operation.

In order to successfully implement the redesigned TOM additional work may be required to close gaps identified by the redesign process. Via it’s Programme and Project Management capability, BSG is able to deliver on the requirements identified as part of these “spin off” projects. In addition, BSG is able to offer appropriate training design and delivery across a variety of business functions and systems. Its broad-based delivery and advisory experience ensures that BSG is able to offer a holistic end-to-end service, making it the perfect partner for projects of this nature.

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