The Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism and Illegal Organisations Guidelines for Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions (DNFBPs) in UAE require DNFBPs to monitor their customers and their transactions on an ongoing basis. They need a mechanism in place to identify suspicious transactions and take appropriate actions.
Suspicious transactions are those attempted or in-progress transactions, irrespective of their completion status, which give enough grounds for suspicion about the transaction. Such suspicious transactions may indicate the involvement of proceeds of crime, being related to money laundering (ML), financing of terrorism (FT), or funding of any illegal organisation, or the transaction intended for ultimate use in furthering activity related to any such crime.
Reporting such suspicious transactions is essential to ensure Anti Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance. This means that DNFBPs need to monitor transactions in real-time in order to identify any suspicious transactions and report them to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in time.
Real-time transaction monitoring involves analysing customer transactions and behaviour patterns by considering customer data and interactions to form a complete picture of their activity in real-time. This helps identify any anomaly indicating a suspicious transition.
Real-time transaction monitoring offers various key benefits across business operations and enhances the overall capabilities of the (AML/CFT) framework.
Here’s a list of key benefits of implementing real-time transaction monitoring:
Real-time transaction monitoring helps in identifying or detecting any change or fluctuation from usual customer behavior and transactions, enabling immediate detection of patterns indicating suspicious transactions.
Immediate detection of suspicious transactions facilitates immediate action, which is filing timely reports on the goAML portal of the UAE FIU. Immediate action is ultimately made possible with real-time transaction monitoring
The real-time detection of suspicious transactions and timely action of regulatory reporting facilitate DNFBPs in the UAE to maintain continuous regulatory compliance with suspicious transaction reporting requirements within the prescribed time frame.
Real-time transaction monitoring facilitates a business to streamline suspicious transaction detection, reporting, and compliance, which, in fact, enhances the operational efficiency of a business.
Instead of incurring heavy fines and penalties due to regulatory non-compliance, the cost of compliance, i.e., the cost incurred to carry out compliance activities such as suspicious transaction monitoring system, training personnel, and taking consulting assistance, is much lesser than the cost of fines that government imposes on non-compliance, which might also lead to loss of business and reputation.
Having a real-time transaction monitoring system helps with a dynamic threat response as a real-time transaction monitoring system enables a business to perceive and respond to ML/FT and proliferation financing (PF) threats when integrated with other AML compliance software such as Know Your Customer (KYC), Case Management tool, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and so on. Transaction monitoring tool integration with other tools enables businesses to develop dynamic threat responses against ML/FT and PF risks.
Obtaining real-time information about a customer’s transaction details enables businesses to make informed decisions regarding the urgency and prioritisation of analysing a potentially suspicious transaction pattern by the AML Compliance Officer or Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO), helping the business to allocate its resources in an efficient manner.
Implementing real-time transaction monitoring strengthens AML/CFT measures and enhances the operational efficiency of businesses and regulatory compliance. With the help of RapidAML software, businesses can achieve real-time monitoring of transactions and activities and transform their AML measures capabilities more efficiently.
