Unity Trust, the Birmingham-based bank that acts for trade unions
and charities, is rolling out anti-money laundering software,
following the crackdown by financial regulators on suspicious
transactions after the 11 September terror attacks.
Following four months of testing, the bank plans to go live with
the system shortly.
Unity rejected the traditional anti-money laundering systems used
by the larger banks in favour of a package from SAS. It said the
software is flexible enough to adapt to the unusual behaviour of
its customer base.
"We deal a lot with charities and trade unions who have thousands
of transactions coming through the network. They put one large
payment out into the market at the end of the day," said Neil
Hartley, head of internal audit and compliance.
Although this is normal for charities and unions, most anti-money
laundering packages would view the transactions as highly
suspicious.
The SAS software, which runs on a standalone PC supporting an SAS
datawarehouse, monitors customer behaviour over a period of time,
rather than attempting to spot one-off suspicious
transactions.
It uses a set of 30 customisable rules to identify patterns of
money laundering and produces a monthly analysis of the bank's most
suspicious customers, which staff use as a basis for further
investigation.
"It really shows suspicious behaviour rather than suspicious
transactions, which helps us concentrate our resources on
investigation and action, rather than trying to detect money
laundering," said Hartley.
All banks are required to pass details of suspicious activity to
the National Criminal Intelligence Serv-ice. The Financial Services
Authority (FSA) also rates banks according to their money
laundering risk. Charities are known conduits for money
laundering.
"The package will help us demonstrate to the FSA that we are
competent and that we know what we are doing," said Hartley.
Until now the bank has relied on staff making SQL database
enquiries to identify suspicious transactions.