Aktia Bank has selected Accuity’s Global WatchList® to provide regulatory sanctions and other compliance data covering people (PEPS), companies, vessels, goods, countries and payment information. The Finnish bank’s decision to implement Accuity’s comprehensive data solution was driven by two objectives: proactive compliance with regulatory requirements to identify sanctioned entities; together with a need to improve the efficiency of Aktia Bank’s core banking systems to provide a faster service to its growing community of online banking customers.

Aktia Bank needed a data provider that could deliver reliable information into its new core banking system in the correct format, providing easy to manage updates, whilst reducing the bank’s risk exposure. By implementing Accuity’s compliance data set, which is comprehensive, robust, and constantly updated, Aktia Bank is able to take a proactive approach to regulatory AML compliance, and can ensure that high risk entities don’t go into its systems unnoticed. A secondary benefit of the new solution is that it reduces the workload and therefore the cost of compliance for Aktia Bank. Rather than Aktia Bank’s team having to perform manual checks to spot any suspicious activity, the system can identify risks systematically, freeing the team to focus on other areas.

Niklas Lemberg, Director of Payment Services at Aktia Bank plc, said: “The increasing use of smartphones and mobile devices, decreasing use of retail bank branches, as well as rising expectations of customer service are some of the ways in which our customers’ behaviour is shifting. We have decided to proactively improve our compliance screening systems and processes to ensure we can respond to the increasing pace of modern banking.”

Pat Hinchin, Senior Director, Risk and Compliance, Accuity, added: “As financial institutions provide new channels and products for their customers, there is a correlated increase in compliance requirements, particularly as some of those new channels may make it more difficult for institutions to ascertain the identity of their customers. In our view, the banks that will be successful will be those that can innovate for their clients at the same time as taking a proactive approach to compliance to protect their customers and their reputations.”