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Exploring AML Risks in COVID-Era and the Ways to Address Them
The world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis it brought in is unprecedented in the history of humankind. While there are a number of pandemic-related factors contributing to the expected crisis with financial services, financial crimes pose a se...
AML Amid COVID-19: Watch out for These FBI-listed Fraud Schemes
There has been a rise in the number of cybercrimes and fraud schemes across the globe ever since the proliferation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Criminals, in general, are taking advantage of people’s scare, helplessness, and the need for immediate financial assistance and medical supplies among others. Financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorist financing have a favourable situation to thrive at a time when a great number of working people across the globe are confined to their homes and are using digital means to complete their daily tasks. Being one of the most affected countries from the pandemic, the US has become a victim of several scams and crimes related to COVID-19. In a recent interview, Steven Merrill, head of the FBI...
How Criminals Used COVID-19 Sales Pitch to Defraud, Launder Money
Unmasking the Scheme
According to a narrative by the INTERPOL, the criminals capitalized on the increasing demand for face masks as a large number of countries were going into lockdown in mid-March due to the coronavirus outbreak. Here’s what happened.
- German health authorities, who were following new leads, contracted two sales companies in Zurich and Hamburg to procure EUR 15 million worth of face masks. They were unable to procure from usual business channels due to a global shortage of medical supplies.
- To secure the deal, criminals created a fake company website that appeared to be linked to a legitimate company in Spain selling face masks. Using compromised legitimate email addresses, they started email correspondence claiming they have 10 million masks in stock.
- When the delivery fell through, the criminals referred the buyers to ...
Money Laundering Amid COVID-19: What Regulators Across Globe Say
As the above crimes will undoubtedly increase money laundering activities, these are times for banks, governments, and multilateral institutions to be vigilant and take measures. Many regulators across the globe have realised the challenges that banks and other financial institutions will face in anti-money laundering compliance. Albeit a temporary suspension in the regular supervisory activities, they have instructed financial institutions to stay cau...
How will Art Cease to Be a Preferred Money Laundering Vehicle?
Money laundering via high-end art and antiquities is not new yet it is difficult to detect. Art-related money laundering amounts to about US$3 billion per year, according to this blog, quoting the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Criminals often use rare and unique art pieces such as famous paintings, sculpture and fine antiques make their illegal money legitimate. Art is attractive to launderers as they can be hidden or smuggled. Further, transactions involving arts are often anonymous, while prices are subjective and manipulated. A Globe and Mail report says: “Once purchased, the art can disappear from view for years, even decades. A lot of the art bought at auctions goes to freeports – ultra-secure warehouses for the collecti...
How do we weather a tornado of change?
“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance” – Samuel Johnson All of us are in challenging times. However, we cannot afford to be lethargic to life, work, and business. As governments across the globe are tirelessly implementing m...
Exploring AML Risks in COVID-Era and the Ways to Address Them
The world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis it brought in is unprecedented in the history of humankind. While there are a number of pandemic-related factors contributing to t...
AML Amid COVID-19: Watch out for These FBI-listed Fraud Schemes
There has been a rise in the number of cybercrimes and fraud schemes across the globe ever since the proliferation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Criminals, in general, are taking advantage of people’s ...
How Criminals Used COVID-19 Sales Pitch to Defraud, Launder Money
As the world is working hard to contain the spread of the COVID-19, criminals continue to take advantage of the pandemic. They are devising sophisticated methods to defraud people and launder the c...
Money Laundering Amid COVID-19: What Regulators Across Globe Say
As the world continues to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, there are reports that criminals are taking advantage of the difficult situation. They are seizing the moment to proliferate their cri...
How will Art Cease to Be a Preferred Money Laundering Vehicle?
Money laundering via high-end art and antiquities is not new yet it is difficult to detect. Art-related money laundering amounts to about US$3 billion per year, according to this blog, quoting the ...
Beware! Money Mules in Demand amid COVID-19. Here’s an Effective Cure
If reports are to be believed, cybercrooks are taking advantage of the COVID-19 situation. They are targeting people who were laid off or working from home due to the pandemic to work for them as m...
How do we weather a tornado of change?
“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance” – Samuel Johnson All of us are in challenging times. However, we cannot afford to be lethargic to life, work, and b...
Roundtable Rewind: Embracing Next-gen Tech & Collaboration Key...
As a regtech player with a vision to enable sustainable compliance programs in financial institutions, Tookitaki organized a first-of-its-kind industry roundtable in Charlotte, NC, USA to discuss o...
Tookitaki Appoints Industry Veteran Joe Friscia as Advisor
Tookitaki Holding Pte. Ltd. appointed industry veteran Joe Friscia, former President of NICE Actimize and BAE Systems as Advisor to the Company’s Advisory Board. Joe brings over 25 years’ extensive...
Should Modern Machines Be Ethical?
There are mounting concerns across the globe about the reliability and safety of artificial intelligence (AI) based systems and its enabling technologies such as machine learning (ML). On the air a...
Tookitaki Raises Another US$11.7 million in Series A; Closes Round ...
– by Abhishek Chatterjee, Founder & CEO The Tookitaki team and I are excited to announce that we have raised an additional US$11.7 million in Series A funding, taking the total investment...
30 Years of FATF: Notable Facts About Global AML Watchdog
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body formed in 1989 to combating money laundering, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Since its inception, the global agenc...
Tookitaki Joins Aite Financial Crime Forum as Sponsor
Technological advances have fundamentally changed the operational landscape of financial institutions. However, there are also new risks emerging in forms of sophisticated financial frauds and comp...
Will Machine Learning Replace Compliance Professionals?
The impact of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning on job security has been a widely discussed topic today. Of course, AI has advanced very quickly in the l...
6 Most Prevalent Cyber-Laundering Methods in APAC
Despite being a medium to exchange information in real-time and with scale, the Internet is being misused in several ways. Among the slew of financial crimes facilitated by the Internet, money laun...
What Made Us Earn the WEF Technology Pioneer Title
Tookitaki has bagged another global acknowledgement for its outstanding works in the regulatory compliance field. Our company was selected among hundreds of candidates as one of the World Economic ...
We Stay as a Team, We Win as a Team and We Flourish as a Team
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people t...
ABA Regulatory Compliance Conference: 10 Sessions You Can’t Miss
The 2019 edition of the American Bankers Association (ABA) Regulatory Compliance Conference is a few more days away. Organized by the Washington, D.C.-based trade association, the conference is tou...
Tookitaki AMLS Wins SBR Technology Excellence Award 2019
Tookitaki’s Anti-Money Laundering Suite (AMLS), an end-to-end machine learning-powered transaction monitoring and names screening solution, has bagged the inaugural Singapore Business Review ...
Watchdogs Grow Optimistic about AI Prospects at Banks
Proper regulation of banking operations is important as any failure in the banking system would affect the wider economy. Therefore, banking is one of the most regulated industries across the globe...
Pitfall of Black Box AI at Banks: Explaining Your Models to Regulators
The use cases of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in front-office, middle-office and back-office activities at banks are growing slowly but steadily. The major areas of AI play inc...
AI for Regulatory Compliance at Banks: 4 Assessments Before You Oka...
Banking is one of the industries where artificial intelligence and machine learning find their applications at a rapid pace. Regulatory compliance within banking is an area which has become a costl...
We Believe in Innovation, the Key to Survival and Growth
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” -Steve Jobs What comes on the top of your screen when you google the meaning of the word innovation is – the introduction of someth...
Compliance Functions in Need of a Technological Overhaul. Can Machi...
McKinsey in its latest compliance benchmarking survey found that compliance function at financial institutions has reached “an inflection point” and current compliance standards are in an “inchoate...
Tookitaki Raises US$7.5 mn Series A from Global VCs to Transform Re...
Tookitaki, a regulatory technology company that aims to enable financial institutions to develop sustainable compliance programs, has raised US$7.5 million in Series A round. The round was co-led b...
From Wachovia to Danske Bank: Biggest Money Laundering Cases in Rec...
Money laundering – the criminal activity of processing criminal proceeds to disguise their origin – is one of the gravest problems faced by the global economy, and its size is growing rapidly. It i...
A Modern Approach to Address the Reconciliation Challenges of Finan...
Reconciliation of transactions is deemed critical for the smooth running of every financial institution. The speed and accuracy of data reconciliation can distinguish a successful institution from ...
Busting a Myth: Compliance Officer’s Job is All About Risk
Regulatory compliance has become a dreadful task for banks after regulators across the globe set stricter norms in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in an effort to prevent financial crime...
SocGen Goes Next-Gen with Tookitaki Reconciliation Suite
Société Générale leveraged Tookitaki’s Reconciliation Suite to automate the bank’s existing break reconciliation system. Key Challenges Addressed The bank’s finance department was unable to handle ...
Attending ACAMS Conference in Singapore? Tookitaki Awaits You with ...
“In today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to re-invent. The only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it.”- Jeff Bezos Singapore is hosting ACAMS’ 11th A...
MAS’ Stress on Transaction Monitoring for Effective AML/CFT Complia...
Singapore is known for its top-notch AML/CFT regime created through up-to-date legislation, stringent policy and uncompromising supervision to safeguard against the abuse of the city state’s financ...
Mifid II and the Pressing Need for a New Reconciliation Approach
The financial services industry in the EU has been confused with the introduction of a revamped version of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II). The ambitious regulatory reform...
Is Automated Reconciliation Next to Impossible in Today’s Complex F...
The 2008 global financial crisis and fairly new regulatory requirements like Basel III asked financial institutions (FIs) to cut operating costs and adopt a lean operations structure, pushing FIs t...
Modern Tech to Reshape US AML Compliance with Regulators’ Recent Ha...
George Bernard Shaw once said: “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” The past week has seen a significant change of mind from financial regulators in the US in their ardent ...
Skills Development: We Have Talents and We Strive to Multiply Them
“Mastery lies on an infinite continuum, and as a result, we will never reach the end. We can, however, see to it that we are as far along that continuum as our circumstance allows.” ― Chris Matakas...
It’s Our Fourth Founding Day; Taking a Pause to Cherish Our Simple ...
Today, as we step into our 4th year of foundation, I feel proud and honored to be leading Tookitaki that has been successful in creating added value to all its stakeholders. I was never a CEO and T...
Tookitaki Expands into the US with New Office in Charlotte
SINGAPORE, Sept. 24, 2018: Tookitaki Holding Pte Ltd, a leading regulatory technology company, is pleased to announce the official opening of its North American office in Charlotte, NC, in the Unit...
We Tame Machines but We Unleash Human Spirits
We are well aware of the fact that our progress as an organization is in the hands of our employees. The more energy, time and attention we invest in them, the more yield we receive. So, we always ...
5 Methods That Modern Money Launderers Use To Beat Detection
Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it. DID YOU KNOW? Every year, an estimated amount in the range of US$800 billion-US$2 trillion (2-5% of global GDP) is being laundered globally Regu...
Risk Management Conference: Positive Vibes from All Corners
The Risk Management Association’s (RMA) premier annual event, the Risk Management Conference, came to an end on 6 November, and Tookitaki had the privilege to attend the event which we believe was ...
Singapore Fintech Festival: Tookitaki to showcase advanced machine ...
Singapore is assured of the Fintech world’s unwavering attention next week, as the city state, is hosting this year’s Fintech Festival during 12-16 November. Touted as the world’s largest platform ...
The RMA Clarion Call to Address Risks and the Tookitaki Way
Risk officers, doing your best today is good while preparing hard for tomorrow is extraordinary. Risk management at banks has become difficult due to operational and regulatory changes. The Risk Ma...
