SmartSearch, the UK’s leading provider of digital compliance, has published an agenda-setting whitepaper to highlight the anti-money laundering shortcomings and sanctions loopholes which continue to allow up to £100bn of illicit wealth to impact the UK economy every year.
The paper is part of the company’s continuing Electronic Verification Uncovered campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the dangers of relying on out-dated, manual methods of identity verification for regulated businesses.
Its findings are based on a comprehensive survey of 500 decision-makers in regulated firms from the finance, legal, banking and property sectors. Some of the insights revealed by the survey include:
- Almost half of regulated firms have seen a rise in criminals attempting to launder money or commit financial crime.
- Despite the increased threats, a quarter of regulated firms admit to still using flawed manual checks on easily forged hard-copy documents like passports and utility bills.
- More than three quarters (77 per cent) of property firms have not changed their approach to onboarding new customers since the invasion of Ukraine and thousands of new sanctions were imposed on Russia.
- Nearly half of all regulated firms fail to check for the “ghost” firms used by criminals as part of a corporate infrastructure designed to hide the connection of criminal beneficiaries.
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