Specialists in financial crime +
data & analytics
Our domain expertise
Anti-Money Laundering
Financial institutions continue to be exploited by criminals to launder the proceeds of their illicit activities. Whilst some of this activity has shifted to Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and crypto-exchanges, a significant proportion of it continues to be laundered through Retail and Corporate banks. The controls used to mitigate financial crime continue to suffer from the same weaknesses, as the final notices from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority regularly highlight. They are simply not targeted enough to the risks they are intended to address.
We help financial institutions to better understand the risks present in their organisation, evaluate the risks of their customers and more effectively identify suspicious behaviour.
Fraud
prevention
Whilst fraud continues to be a cost of doing business, and continuous optimisation of fraud prevention controls will always be required, the increased prevalence of scams has introduced new challenges. Regulators have demanded that financial institutions do more to protect and support consumers and so fraud prevention functions, which traditionally have been more aligned with credit risk and collections, are now finding themselves coalescing with compliance.
We help our clients to continuously improve their fraud prevention controls to reduce fraud losses, streamline customer journeys and operations to incorporate fraud prevention by design, and to understand where synergies between fraud and broader financial crime compliance can be utilised to create a simplified yet comprehensive control framework.
Sanctions compliance
Sanctions regimes have become more complex over time in an attempt to increase impact on their intended targets, whilst reducing unintended consequences on the broader population. This has also brought greater complexity in sanctions compliance. For most financial institutions however, the required approach to sanctions compliance remains broadly the same. Sanctions risk must be evaluated through Customer Due Diligence, Name Screening and Transaction Screening. Crypto asset firms must now also take this much more seriously as a result of the Travel Rule.
We help our clients to understand how sanctions regimes apply to them and optimise the sanctions systems and processes in place to identify the risks where they exist, reduce false positives, and reduce operational cost.
Our services
Risk
AML and sanctions risk coverage assessments
Product risk assessments
Transaction monitoring typologies review
AML and sanctions penetration testing
Data & analytics
Customer segmentation
Rule tuning (above-the-line and below-the-line analysis)
Bespoke model development
Model management
Data engineering
Data analytics
Data visualisation
Technology
AML Transaction Monitoring
Payments Fraud
Name screening
Payment screening
Watch list optimisation
Customer risk assessment models
Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM)
Social network analytics
Operations
Process review and optimization
Investigator training
Investigator certification
Establishing and management of KPIs
Automation of investigation narratives
Our clients
-
![Neobanks]()
Neobanks and challenger banks
Innovation is critical to enable banking to keep pace with the changes in how we go about our day-to-day lives. Smooth, paperless, app-based customer journeys and exceptional customer service are transforming the industry. But the same banks disrupting the market are making headlines for failings in financial crime prevention.
Our experience supporting the very biggest as well as the very newest financial institutions, and everything in between, makes us uniquely placed to help challengers transform financial crime compliance into a competitive edge.
-
![Money transfer]()
Payment service providers (PSPs) and Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs)
PSPs and EMIs offer many of the services provided by traditional banks, some of which are inherently high-risk from a financial crime perspective. Yet investment by PSPs in financial crime prevention has typically been limited as a result of low scrutiny from regulators and squeezed margins. Regulatory pressure is increasing, with the FCA issuing a ‘Dear CEO’ letter for payment firms in March 2023.
We help our clients to design effective controls which are proportionate to their business, recognising the importance of balancing effective financial crime prevention with low-friction customer journeys.
-
![]()
Building Societies
In the United Kingdom, building societies compete with banks for most consumer banking services, particularly in mortgage lending and savings products. Increasingly however building societies are offering current accounts, credit cards and personal loans, increasing the fraud and financial crime risks that they are exposed to.
We have supported many building societies understand their unique fraud and financial crime risks and right-size the controls they need to effectively manage this.
-
![Crypto coins]()
Crypto asset firms
As regulators have started to mature in their approach to supervising crypto firms, expectations have become clearer and bigger players in the industry have started to make more substantial investments in their compliance programmes. Yet it is still early days in establishing best practices for financial crime controls – for example, consistent sharing of payer/payee information under the travel rule.
We work with crypto firms to establish mature financial crime controls tailored to this industry, leveraging learnings from our experience in proximate industries.
-
![Corporate offices]()
Established retail and global banks
Whilst most established banks now have a financial crime programme in place, all too often the controls are not tailored to the risks, limiting effectiveness and significantly increasing operational costs. We believe technology and operations must be directly aligned with the risks in order to mitigate them effectively.
We support our clients to better understand how their organisations might be exploited by criminals and to refine controls to tackle these modus operandi head on.
-
![Sun loungers]()
Wealth and asset management firms
As a comparatively low risk sector from a financial crime perspective, wealth and asset managers have flown under the regulator’s radar. However, with regulators promising to become ‘more targeted, intrusive and assertive”, a greater focus is required to manage the risk that does exist. Legacy data, limited digitisation and manual processes can make this a significant challenge within this sector.
We use our detailed understanding of the risks that exist in the investment management industry to support our clients to create proportionate controls to effectively manage financial crime, rather than the more costly controls appropriate to other sectors.
Our insights
Malverde have supported many clients to design, implement and optimise their TM systems. Through this experience we have developed the following checklist to support clients in reviewing the suitability of their system to manage their unique risks and avoid large inefficiencies and costs.