FRA Partner Gerben Schreurs on the importance of collaboration between financial institutions and regulators

FRA’s Gerben Schreurs was quoted in The Fintech Times, discussing the importance of collaboration between financial institutions and regulators. The Fintech Times asked industry leaders: if working together was easier or more encouraged, how much more of an impact could financial institutions and regulators have in fighting financial crime?

The extract below is published in The Fintech Times.

Should firms be sharing insight?

“A closer collaboration would help to avoid working in silos,” explains Gerben Schreurs, Partner at the Forensic Risk Alliance, a forensic consultancy which advises companies and law firms on corruption, sanctions and bribery matters.

Currently, most institutions try to detect and mitigate financial crime based on their own information (KYC and transactions). This will always be just a single perspective on potential financial crime which, in most cases, is thriving by using more complex structures and multiple layers to succeed.

“If a regulatory landscape would be created that allows for sharing insight between institutions and regulators, there would be a new world of opportunities to detect financial crime and unravel complex transaction flows by having the different data points available. In some countries, pilots are being held with a form of centralised transaction monitoring in a public-private partnership.

“These types of developments should be monitored closely, and the lessons learned from these initiatives can contribute to a more effective fight against financial crime.

“This should also be accompanied by a culture shift where the regulator is only there to ‘punish’ an institution when not fully complying with FCC standards into a reality where forces are joined to learn and improve with the goal of fighting the financial crime at the root and not spend time on defensive filings and formalities.”