There are many factors that contribute to the rising cost of Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) including the limitations placed on the privacy of data, the growing complexity of compliance itself and the large chunk of labour costs linked to this. This could explain why sustainability is emerging as a key objective for firms in their quest to achieve FCC while trying to manage the spiralling costs linked to this.

With more than 20 years of solid Financial Crime Compliance and Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) experience, Lysis Group knows that the best efforts from firms to implement and maintain FC compliance, without expert interventions, often fall short due to specific reasons:

• Firms tend to focus more on testing, monitoring, and improving their FC controls and don’t always realise that their activities might be completely outdated and are no longer fit-for-purpose, which might also impact the accuracy and completeness of their data.
• Due to the complexity of FCC, firms are often overwhelmed which could lead to reactive behaviour and the adoption of quick fixes. This becomes obstacles for continuous engagement to improve processes, introduce innovation, automation, and cultural changes to enhance the effectiveness of FC frameworks in a sustainable manner.
• Global and multinational firms must weather many challenges to maintain the consistency of FC controls across different entities and jurisdictions. Therefore, actions taken by firms such as ‘unbundling’, can be perceived as risky shortcuts and potential attempts to circumvent regulations.

Increase effectiveness by focusing on efficiency

Our extensive track record of helping firms to successfully achieve and maintain FCC has a distinct focus on reducing the short-and long-term costs linked to compliance and at the same time, promote organisational growth. This can only be achieved when clear objectives have been identified, are reviewed regularly through active engagement and if there is an emphasis on the planned outcomes.

To optimise Firms’ financial crime (FC) controls, require an increase in effectiveness of processes along with a dedicated focus on high efficiency which will facilitate sustainable processes to demonstrate effective FC controls under scrutiny. Firms must also view the improvement of their FC controls as a good commercial investment by focusing on the business advantages these could have for the firm.

Key directional indications

We are all aware that the financial crime landscape is changing fast, which is why it is vitally important to partner with a market-leading FCC expert.

However, implementation of effective and robust FC governance can increase costs and become unsustainable unless innovation intervenes to improve the adequacy and effectiveness of a firm’s FC framework efficiently. For a firm to be sustainable, it must be proactive and focus on prevention instead of consistently reacting and remediating and facing costly fines and reputational damage in the process.

The optimisation of FC controls

Lysis Group has the necessary skills and experience to assist your firm to compile, review and optimise FC controls across the entire Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) process since we focus on the entire chain of client activities. This will encourage retention, improve customer experiences and to maximise the firm’s profitability.

From prospecting to onboarding to account management to servicing, and finally to re-engagement, an optimised CLM creates a comprehensive and accurate 360-degree client lifecycle view that captures every data point of your client’s journey and analyse that data to generate insights into client-preferences and enable proportionate FC controls to be implemented. This allows the firm to apply proportionate and effective controls, at different stages of the client’s relationship with the firm. After all, the main objective of effective CLM is to identify opportunities for growing revenue, boosting operating efficiencies, and enforcing compliance throughout the client lifecycle.

‍