Compliance & Ethics

Australia's financial intelligence agency has released a series of new threat assessments that argue the challenge facing anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing professionals is no longer simply identifying suspicious transactions. Increasingly, the reports suggest, the greater difficulty lies in recognizing illicit activity that has been carefully embedded within legitimate commerce.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority published the final rules governing firms that buy, trade, safeguard and issue cryptoassets, completing the policy framework that will underpin the country's new regulatory regime. The package reaches well beyond anti-money laundering controls and financial promotions, bringing prudential requirements, market conduct standards and consumer protections into a sector that has long operated under a narrower form of oversight.

Section 609(e) of the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires businesses to provide victims with records of fraudulent transactions so they can piece together what was done with their personal information and begin repairing the damage. According to the Federal Trade Commission, Amazon too often turned that straightforward legal obligation into something far more difficult.

There is a moment in almost every regulatory framework when compliance ceases to be the interesting question. The forms have been completed and the governance structures exist. Policies have been approved, committees have met, and someone can demonstrate that every required process was followed. Yet consumers can still end up with products that were never truly designed for them. Regulation, at its most useful, begins where documentation stops.

Australia's anti-money laundering regime became considerably larger , when tens of thousands of businesses will enter the scope of the country's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws, extending compliance obligations well beyond the financial sector into industries long regarded by investigators as attractive channels for laundering illicit funds.

Belgium's Financial Services and Markets Authority has reached a €1 million agreed settlement with Banque Degroof Petercam after concluding that the bank breached European conduct rules while administering employee stock-option plans. The regulator found shortcomings in the disclosure of costs, the management of conflicts of interest and the assessment of whether certain investment products were appropriate for employees.

Australia's corporate regulator has secured a $6.7 million (AUD $10.3 million) penalty against Mercer Super after the Federal Court found the superannuation trustee maintained inadequate systems for identifying and reporting significant compliance investigations, allowing serious member service issues to go undisclosed or be reported inaccurately over nearly three years.