Travelex Qatar, a subsidiary of British foreign exchange company Travelex, held a one-day workshop on effective implementation of RBA (Risk-Based Approach) for AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and CTF (Combating Terrorist Financing).
The industry-wide discussion at the workshop covered money exchange and transfer space’s fast-evolving compliance developments, immediate threats, and long-term challenges and opportunities.
The workshop took place at Marsa Malaz Kempinski, The Pearl, gathering representatives from the Qatar Central Bank, Travelex, and money exchange houses in Qatar.
Tom Fane, managing director, Travelex Middle East and Turkey, said: “It is the unfortunate reality of our world that politically motivated and illicit trade flows and transactions, as well as those channeled through the ‘informal’ financial system both onshore and offshore, have grown to unprecedented levels in the past decade. The urgency and importance of this programme, for which we are delighted and privileged to have partnered with the QCB, cannot be overstated.”
In recent years, regulatory authorities, banking and finance institutions, and tech providers have been sounding the alarm on the perils of an increasingly decentralised financial system, particularly as it continues to outpace policymaking and market readiness.
In 2018 alone, six of the world’s leading financial groups spent nearly $20bn in fines and dispute settlements involving corruption and failure to comply with AML/CFT best practice and preventive measures.
Shedding light on nationwide developments on this front, Ali Sultan al-Sulaiti, the QCB’s director, AML/CFT Department, assured that Qatar is pouring its efforts and making steadfast progress into combating and limiting the damages incurred by financial crime, money laundering, and terrorism financing transactions.
“As the backbone of the country’s surveillance and supervisory framework for financial institutions, QCB has adopted many risk management tools and processes to this end, chief among which are those falling under RBA.”
Al-Sulaiti noted, RBA is a global mandate for nations, authorities, and bodies over the world to abide and work by, and naturally so in alignment with their market-specific goals and monitoring systems. As such, RBA has become an integral operational pillar for international institutions, the QCB, and the Qatari banking sector.
The AML/CFT onus is not one to be shouldered by a single administration, authority, or organisational level within financial institutions, he added, but rather, on the collective responsibility and efforts of the industry, from the top of the institutional hierarchy, down to the daily customer-facing operations.