White Papers
Accuity has more than 150 years' experience enabling organizations to maximize efficiency and facilitate compliance of their transactions. As the Official Registrar of ABA Routing Numbers since 1911, we have helped businesses around the world improve operations through our unparalleled data, software and services.
We are pleased to share our industry knowledge and best practices in white papers that provide authoritative, practical information about the changing landscape of financial risk and payment processing.
To access any or all of Accuity's White Papers, simply provide us with your information in the fields below and click Submit.
Putting Your “REP” on the Line
In the alphabet soup of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) acronyms, the phrase Reputationally Exposed Person (REP) joins Politically Exposed Person (PEP) and Financially Exposed Person (FEP) in the mix. While it is difficult to locate an exact definition of the term, one used by a top 10 global financial institution is “a client who, in the reasonable opinion of the relevant Business Group’s Compliance Department/AML unit, demonstrates the capacity to cause serious damage to us,” captures its essence.
Published: 09/2008
Selecting Sanctions Lists: How It Impacts Risk Operations
When it comes to screening accounts and transactions against sanctions lists like the U.S. Treasury&rquo;s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), compliance officers lose sleep over false negatives—the true matches they might not be catching. To minimize that risk, they spend their days wading through a flood of false positives—time-consuming alerts that are not true matches. But, do they think about the matches that are possibly being missed because the right sanctions list was never selected for screening? And, are they wasting hours reviewing alerts from a list that did not need to be screened against in the first place? Selecting the correct sanctions lists for a screening process may be one of the most important decisions a compliance officer makes.
Published: 09/2008
Fighting DysPEPsia
Some aspects of customer due diligence (CDD) are fairly straightforward. While different institutions assign varying risk weights to higher-risk geographies, industries and products, identifying those areas of concern is pretty cut-and-dried. However, there is no common global definition of who should be considered a Politically Exposed Person (PEP)
and the guidelines provided by governmental and regulatory bodies are infuriatingly ambiguous.
Published: 05/2008
Continued Paperless Growth: ACH and Image Exchange
There has been a steady growth in the use of Automated Clearing House (ACH) and image exchange, which is having an influence on paper-based payments. Financial institutions can exploit ACH and image exchange options in order to clear payments in the most efficient and economical manner. While there has been a
recent dramatic growth in image exchange, its adoption remains limited due to the majority of financial institutions that are still image-disabled. On the other hand, new technologies such as Remote Deposit Capture are promoting the growth of image exchange transactions.
Published: 05/2008
Reduce Bank Costs with Payment Straight Through Processing
Payments originating from corporations today face many challenges. Globalization of corporates’ operations and supply
chains makes cash pooling and payment processing tricky. Yet, there is a growing focus by corporations on improving
efficiency, including their payment straight through processing (STP) rates.
Published: 03/2008
Performing Due Diligence on Prospective Employees to Reduce Occupational Risk
In this ever-increasing age of employing risk-based approaches to managing client relationships, it is important to
consider the development and deployment of a risk-based approach in screening prospective employees and performing
enhanced due diligence on those prospective employees to avoid the potential for fraud. While most organizations are
familiar with Know Your Customer (KYC) initiatives, there is a lot of evidence that suggests a Know Your Employee
(KYE) program should be deployed as well.
Published: 02/2008
SEPA and Credit Transfers
The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) initiative creates a zone for the euro in which all electronic payments are
considered domestic. Since the 28 January 2008 go-live date, banks have been able to send and receive SEPA Credit
Transfers (SCTs) without a difference between national and international payments inside this area and a SEPA cards
framework has been established. The European Payments Council (EPC), the organization behind the European
payments banking industry, has developed the commercial framework for payment instruments. The EPC is
committed to delivering pan-European direct debits (SDDs) in 2009.
Published: 02/2008
Payment STP through High Quality Data
We have entered the information age. As when hard labor powered the Iron Age and fossil fuels ignited the Industrial
Age, data elements are the raw materials of the information age. With extreme fluctuations in the stock markets and
the uncertainty of worldwide economies, all businesses, not just financial institutions, are looking for ways to cut costs,
optimize performance and improve on the bottom line.
Published: 09/2007
Professional Services: More Than Just Consulting
The chief operating officer of a well known manufacturing technologies company once said “Hiring consultants to
conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold.” Another well
known expression states, “A consultant is someone who comes in, borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, keeps
the watch, and charges you an exorbitant fee.” These two viewpoints do not necessarily present the best picture of
consulting services and denote an expensive service provided by outsiders, which might be available in-house.
Published: 09/2007
Back to Basics: Payment Straight Through Processing and Its Impact on Margins
According to a recent study, the number of cross-border payment transactions in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific will grow to a whopping 6,796 million by 2013 (up 177% from the year 2003). Over that same time period, the average revenue a payment processor will earn from each of those transactions will decrease by 22% (from about US$9.34 in 2003 to US$7.27 in 2013).
Published: 06/2007
Caution List Screening — Reducing False Positives
In order for a financial institution to guarantee full compliance it needs to examine every transaction that flows through the institution. This is a formidable task. Auditors, therefore, have recommended using a risk-based approach. While this is effective in targeting the riskiest items for review, many institutions using such an approach are still faced with a large number of "flagged" transactions that must be reviewed.
Published: 05/2007
Impact of US Back-Office Conversion Initiative
Back Office Conversion (BOC), NACHA's new standard entry class (SEC) for check-to-ACH conversion, launched in
March 2007. This rule enables the conversion of checks into ACH debits at the point of sale (POS) and over-the-counter
(in-person) remittance.
Published: 03/2007
Developments in High-Risk Entity Screening
As regulations are requiring more diligent screening of customers and transactions, new firms, industries, governments
and countries are continuously being introduced to various anti-money laundering (AML) solutions. This expanding
segment of the marketplace is entering an AML screening arena that is experiencing new product trends. Together, these
new developments are shaping the future of high-risk entity screening.
Published: 02/2007
Payment STP via ERP — A Popular Trend among Businesses
As bank fees levied against incorrect payment information become more common, corporate customers are being driven
to achieve better payment straight through processing (STP) rates. Because of this, across the corporate landscape, there
has been an increasingly prevalent movement for a wide variety of customers to deploy high quality, integrated payment
data solutions within their business systems.
Published: 02/2007
IBANs: What Do Corporates Need to Do?
To achieve the benefits of the IBAN standard, banks must play their part by ensuring that the systems and procedures
are in place to effectively process IBAN payments. But corporates must also take some responsibility and action in the
successful deployment of IBANs.
Published: 09/2006
Processing IBAN Payments: Overcoming the Issues and Challenges
EU Regulation 2560/2001 and the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) implementation of the International
Bank Account Number (IBAN) have changed the way payments are made in Europe. Ensuring you have all of the
information needed to process an IBAN payment will result in lower costs and higher STP rates.
Published: 04/2006
