ACAMS Risk Assessment

Presentation-ready reports, summaries, and scoring deliver a comprehensive money laundering risk profile to examiners, board members, and other stakeholders

Comprehensive, Automated Risk Profile

ACAMS Risk Assessment is web-based, allowing for timely and seamless updates to help you keep up with ever-changing regulatory requirements

The ACAMS Risk Assessment tool automates cumbersome manual processes to give you time to focus on what matters most: understanding and mitigating your institution's money laundering risk

Multiple-user platform facilitates enterprise-wide risk assessments across multiple lines of business, geographic locations, and other applicable criteria

Flexible and automated residual risk scoring supports varied levels of complexity, and accommodates to institutions of all sizes – from community banks to global financial institutions

Presentation-ready reports clearly communicate your institution’s risk – from comprehensive reports to high level summaries – with dynamic graphic features such as tables, pie charts, and more

A Holistic View Across Multiple Areas of Risk

Identifies risk across your organization’s products, high-risk customer types, and geographies

Helps establish global AML control standards and determine the effectiveness of your institution’s AML risk management program, including internal preventative and detective controls

Offers coverage for a full range of suspicious activities; from structuring to fraud, terrorist financing to money laundering, tax evasion to insider trading, and other financial crime activities in between

Presents global best practices for establishing a sound sanctions program framework

Measures quantity of sanctions risk relating to an institution’s customer base, international transactions, e-banking products, and much more

Anti-Money Laundering Risk Assessment FAQs

Please note, the content included within these FAQs is for general information purposes only, and it is neither legal nor business advice You should consult your own legal and business advisors for advice that applies to your particular situation

A key component of an AML risk assessment is to facilitate the effectiveness of an institution’s AML framework, by identifying inherent risks across the main areas of risk, assessing the institution’s internal preventative and detective controls, and highlighting any gaps in controls which need to be addressed

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council describes AML risk assessment as “the identification of specific risk categories (e g , products, services, customers, and geographic locations) … and an analysis of the information identified to better assess the risks within these specific risk categories” (source: FFIEC BSA/AML Manual)

The FATF explains that risk assessment enables a financial institution to “understand how, and to what extent, it is vulnerable to money laundering/terrorist financing”, and helps it to “determine the level of AML/CFT resources necessary to mitigate that risk” (source: FATF Guidance for a Risk-Based Approach, The Banking Sector)

Organizations may complete risk assessment manually, or by using AML risk assessment software tools and systems Using technology, such as ACAMS Risk Assessment, can help financial institutions to ensure their risk assessment processes and methodologies are objective, and that they respond to the guidance and requirements of global authoritative bodies and financial institution supervisors

Effective AML risk assessments are an important factor in a financial institution’s ability to meet its regulatory obligations

A suspicious activity risk assessment identifies risks relating to wide range of suspicious activity, including fraud, structuring, terrorist financing, money laundering, tax evasion, and other forms of financial crime An effective suspicious activity risk assessment will not only identify risks, but also the effectiveness of applicable preventative and detective controls which financial institutions worldwide need to address Suspicious activity risk assessments may be completed manually, or with the help of tools such as ACAMS Risk Assessment

An effective sanctions risk assessment (SRA) measures the inherent sanctions risks a financial institution is exposed to and the effectiveness of its risk controls Each area of sanctions risk should be allocated an inherent risk rating and control effectiveness should also be rated

The frequency that an SRA needs to be completed and its level of comprehensiveness depends on the risk profile of the institution, and how that risk profile is changing overtime, as well as considering internal resource availability

ACAMS Risk Assessment automates the sanctions risk assessment process, and draws on best practices to help financial institutions worldwide build a sounds sanctions compliance program

An AML risk assessment helps identify the institution’s inherent risk and assesses the effectiveness of its preventative and detective controls

FATF recommends considering the following factors when assessing inherent money laundering risk:

• The nature, scale, diversity, and complexity of the business
• The number of customers already identified as high risk
• The jurisdictions the bank is exposed to (through its own activities of those of customers)