The increased financial transactions and heightened consumer activity over the holiday season can increase vulnerability across multiple industries to various financial crimes. What are some of the ones your compliance team be prepared for?
1) Increased transaction volumes
With increased consumer activity comes the demand for increased transaction screening capabilities as financial transactions surge. Make sure your compliance software can scale to the seasonal pressure and utilise automations to reduce monotonous tasks for your experts.
2) Transaction anomalies
Although transactions are expected to increase teams should still be prepared for unusual patterns or spikes in activity that may indicate fraudulent activities. This may look like unexpected large transactions that don’t match against a risk profile or transactions in atypical locations.Utilise your KYC controls to match against this. Use an AI Advisor to spot transaction anomalies, which assists compliance teams to analyse screening alerts by training AI Advisor to recognise what a good match looks like for your particular risk appetite.
3) Identity theft
Scrutinise new account openings and sudden changes to account information, as criminals attempt identity theft during the holiday season as it’s sometimes easier to hide amongst the increased transactions and account changes over the holiday period. Make sure your team keeps their eyes out for any sudden changes in transaction behaviour or discrepancies in personal information.
4) Gift card transactions.
As gift cards are popular in the holidays, they can also be popular for fraudsters. A popular way of running money through gift cards is using stolen credit cards to purchase them. Monitor for multiple or high-value gift cards purchased especially if it deviates from usual purchasing behaviour.
Offenders frequently employ prepaid cards as a means to conduct money laundering, capitalising on the anonymity and simplicity they provide. Criminals purchase prepaid cards using unlawfully obtained funds and subsequently use to procure goods and services that can be resold at a gain.
Remember, forearmed is forewarned and utilising your teams' years of expertise is key to overcoming increased risks during this time so make time to consult the team and implement new controls for these risks.
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