National Compliance Congress in the Financial Sector

Interview with Mattias Thulin, Trapets’ Sales Manager in Spain and Latin America, in conjunction with the National Compliance Congress in the Financial Sector. Mattias has an engineer degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and he has more than 15 years of experience in IT.

Why did Trapets decide to get involved in a congress like this?

With more than 15 years of experience with services for the financial sector, we understand the needs and challenges for our clients regarding regulatory compliance. This is achieved by having a close dialogue with our clients, visiting them often and taking part in events like this. Trapets is a market leader in the northern European countries and we are currently introducing our services to the Spanish market.

What are some of the most common high-risk activities that have been found in the organizations that hire Trapets?

Among our 250 clients, it’s difficult to generalize, but all our clients analyze their transactions to find behavior that can indicate money laundering or terrorist financing. In our InstantWatch AML platform, there are 35 configurable patterns to adapt and tailor the system based on different needs and activities of each organization. Many organizations use KYC responses to generate customer groups and accounts. These groups are included in the InstantWatch risk model or are used to generate adapted alerts. These may be limits of a smaller amount, a smaller amount of transactions during a certain period or an abnormal pattern of transactions compared to KYC responses.

Do you think Spanish companies are putting enough efforts in preventing money laundering and terrorist financing?

In an ever-changing environment of legislative updates and new scenarios in money laundering methods, we believe that the Spanish financial sector is making a great effort in adapting its processes in order to maintain its regulatory compliance.

Which sectors are most exposed to the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing?

It’s difficult to name specific sectors that are more exposed than others since money laundering and terrorist financing are problems that affect the entire society. however, the financial sector has a good chance of contributing to investigations regarding suspicious transactions as banks and financial institutions have access to transaction chains.

What do you think is the current compliance situation within the Spanish financial sector, taking into account the recent scandals related to baking entities?

The scandals in recent years show that no region or organization is exempt from attempts at money laundering or terrorist financing. We have noticed that these issues are being talked about more and are currently high prioritized by the boards. Despite having made significant progress, there is always an opportunity for improvement and optimization.

What control measures can be established in organizations to prevent them?

It’s recommended to implement an automated surveillance system with an easy interface to investigate and manage the case process within the organization. This helps the organization control risks and discover irregular behavior at an early stage.