How crucial is AML/CFT Compliance for Hong Kong based Businesses?

Hong Kong serves as financial hub of trade and financial industry especially due to its strategic location in APAC and Far East Region. Along with Singapore, Hong Kong’s financial market handles funds from Western capitals of finance for global trade activities. This makes AML Compliance a necessary aspect for funds managers and banking institution. Stock market trading and financial services also make up a major part of this city state’s economy. Recently, the trend to verify the identities of users and clients by major players of Hong Kong economy has gained prominence. This trend gained momentum not only by greater regulatory scrutiny to clamp down on money laundering activities, but private institutions and businesses also wanted to reduce the risk of being fined for becoming an accomplice in a financial crime.

Digital KYC Services

Hong Kong is aspiring to become a Fintech hub and the authorities understand that it is not possible without establishing a state of the art AML database. On their part, Hong Kong government is ready to fast track this entire Digital AML process by launching new smart identity cards that will be replacing existing ones by 2019.

Even banks doing business for decades have been forced to take a proactive role in ascertaining the identity and credentials of their users before providing them with financial services. HSBC is one such example as the bank has started gathering greater customer information to introduce transparent business practices. Just like HSBC, banking organizations and financial institutions were forced to adopt KYC because they were fined in some other territories and countries. For example HSBC was fined millions of dollars in United States for not being vigilant about the identity of its customers. Thus the bank has introduced greater compliance practices like KYC to prevent further penalties.

AML Compliance in Hong Kong

Just recently, Hong Kong authorities changed their Anti-Money Laundering regulations to make them stricter and thus ensuring compliance from ever-so-powerful banks and financial organizations. As a global hub of trade and funds management in the eastern hemisphere, Hong Kong provides a unique opportunity for financial criminals to launder money or transfer funds under the guise of stocks or tradable goods.

Today, innovative practices are being adopted by banks and funds managers in Hong Kong to check for money laundering and terror funding. Account holders are being asked to declare number of transactions that will be performed from their accounts on monthly basis. For larger number of transactions, customers have to give a valid reason. In case a customer signs up with maximum 5 transactions per month and suddenly there are hundreds of transactions being made from that account, red flags start going up.

Recommended For You: RegTech facilitates effortless AML Compliance

KYC and AML Compliance has become necessary to ensure transparency in customer’s global data, operating out of Hong Kong. A centralized KYC and AML compliant system adopted by banks and financial organization will allow for a hassle free account opening, online transactions and easy insurance claims.

Now with all this vital information and confidential data being collected by banks, serious concerns have been raised about the security of data and potential of data breaches. This is where a tried and trusted solution like Shufti can come in handy for financial institutions and banking industry of Hong Kong. It is an AI based comprehensive identity verification service offering both Digital KYC and AML Compliance services. Each digital KYC verification is performed within 30-60 seconds by Shufti and background checks for AML Compliance are performed against 1000 Watch Lists and sanction lists, in addition to 3000 databases. This huge data is maintained by financial crime regulators like UN, Interpol, OFAC and HMT. This gigantic databank for AML Compliance is updated every 14 minutes for constant and updated monitoring.

Shufti is perfect for a global financial hub like Hong Kong as it can verify identity of a person belonging to every country of the world. Its Artificial Intelligence backed system can read and verify credentials in every language of the world as well. So, if you also want to avail top class identity verification service for Digital KYC and AML Compliance, then Shufti is the right choice.