Aresbank is strengthening its trade finance compliance framework with SymphonyAI. The specialist corporate bank serves markets across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It manages financial risk across sensitive international trade corridors. Therefore, strong compliance controls remain central to its operations.
Aresbank is a financial services company in a highly regulated environment. The bank trades instruments and conducts correspondent banking business in a number of markets. These operations need strong transaction monitoring and financial crime controls.
For these needs, Aresbank selected the financial crime compliance platform from SymphonyAI. The platform supports retail, commercial and correspondent banking operations. This will help Aresbank to improve transaction monitoring for trade finance and correspondent banking.
“The future of AML is not about doing more controls. It’s about making our controls smarter through automation, data, and technology.” – Isabel Tobares, Head of Compliance, Global Risk Control, Aresbank
Aresbank Expands Transaction Monitoring
Madrid-based Aresbank specializes in a number of key trade finance instruments. These are correspondent banking, documentary credits and international guaranties. The bank also handles multi-currency credit lines connecting the European and MENA markets. Meanwhile, correspondent banking has a unique risk profile pertaining to a financial crime. Complex compliance requirements also arise from trade finance activity. Regulators continue to focus on sanctions evasion and trade-based money laundering risk.
Aresbank will tap SymphonyAI’s transaction monitoring capabilities via a SaaS solution. The technology will replace controls that are partially automated and operationally intensive. Once it is up and running, the platform will monitor correspondent banking activity worth billions of euros each month. It will also assist Aresbank’s trade finance transaction monitoring.
“Our controls were only partially automated and operationally intensive, and they could no longer keep pace with the oversight our regulators expect across trade finance and correspondent banking,” said Isabel Tobares, Head of Compliance, Global Risk Control at Aresbank. “The future of AML is not about doing more controls. It’s about making our controls smarter through automation, data, and technology. SymphonyAI gives us a platform built for our business, not a retail template, and one we can scale as our compliance requirements evolve.”
The implementation will help support a number of important compliance objectives for Aresbank. Firstly, it will enhance consistency across financial crime operations. It will also provide transparency on compliance processes. Modern SaaS technology will also enhance regulatory preparedness of the platform. As the bank grows its correspondent banking business, it will have increased oversight.
The solution will also create a scalable compliance foundation. “Having this foundation in place allows for future business growth and regulatory changes. Aresbank also expects to cut review hours and speed up transaction processing.
SymphonyAI Powers Scalable Banking Compliance
The SymphonyAI platform offers Aresbank a flexible compliance foundation. The system can adapt as regulations and transaction types evolve. This allows the bank to respond without a complete system renovation. This flexibility continues to be important for financial institutions operating in multiple jurisdictions. The risks of financial crime evolve – and so do the regulatory requirements. Thus, scalable compliance technology helps institutions to maintain effective oversight.
“Aresbank’s business doesn’t look like a typical retail bank, and that’s exactly the point,” said John Edison, President of Financial Services, SymphonyAI. “Our platform is built to support the full range of banking business models, from correspondent banking to trade finance, not just retail compliance. For Aresbank, that meant combining detection rules from both our retail and correspondent banking models into a single solution, then tuning it to reflect the bank’s role as a bridge for trade between Europe and North Africa. This deployment deepens our presence in Iberia and shows how the same financial crime platform trusted by many of the region’s largest banks can be adapted to a specialized institution with a very different risk profile.”
“The compliance challenges in trade finance are not the same as traditional retail banking. Monitoring should include documents, counterparties and jurisdictions behind transactions. A letter of credit or guaranty may, for example, involve several people and places. Compliance teams therefore need to look beyond transaction value or frequency of payment.
These requirements make specialized transaction monitoring especially important. Aresbank’s deployment is based on technology developed for correspondent banking and trade finance. The approach is not based on a retail-oriented system that requires major adaptation. Rather, SymphonyAI brings together the most relevant detection capabilities into a single platform.
The implementation also hints at the role of Aresbank in the facilitation of trade between Europe and North Africa. This allows the platform to address the bank’s specific operational and compliance needs. Aresbank’s uptake illustrates the growing role of technology in financial crime compliance. Banks are more and more in need of system support to the changing regulations and complex transaction environments.
Aresbank makes use of SymphonyAI to enhance compliance in trade finance while enhancing efficiency in operations. The system will also aid in correspondent banking monitoring as the company grows. The rollout shows how banks can utilize technology, data and automation in order to upgrade their AML processes. In addition, it offers a solution for compliance that can adapt to changes in requirements.
Read the full story of how SymphonyAI adapted its platform to Aresbank’s specialist business model in the company’s case study, Aresbank case study.
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News Source: Businesswire.com
