For many organizations, an audit of their Anti-Money Laundering (AML) system reveals critical misconfigurations that either existed from the start or were introduced through unchecked changes. These issues can result in significant risks, and without a thorough review, your AML system might not function as intended, exposing your business to serious compliance and operational threats.
Why Do You Need an AML System Audit?
Conducting a comprehensive audit on your AML system is vital to ensure that your platform is configured correctly and operating at its best. Here’s how we approach it:
Planning and Scoping: We define the key objectives of the audit, focusing on system setup, configuration, and updates.
System Review: A detailed evaluation of your platform’s architecture, transaction monitoring rules, workflows, security settings, and user permissions to ensure the system is performing optimally and securely.
AML Scenarios and Detection Models: Assessing the effectiveness of your anti-money laundering scenarios, detection models, and reviewing false positive alert analysis to fine-tune performance.
Data Ingestion and Data Quality Processes: Reviewing how data is brought into the system and ensuring quality controls are in place to avoid inaccuracies.
Platform Governance: Analyzing the overall governance of the platform to make sure it's aligned with best practices and managed effectively.
Reporting and Recommendations: Our audit concludes with a detailed report that includes findings and actionable recommendations to enhance system security, data handling, and overall performance.
The Risks of Not Conducting an AML Audit
Failing to conduct a proper audit can expose your organization to various risks, including:
Bad Data Quality: Poor data ingestion processes can lead to inaccurate monitoring, meaning suspicious transactions might not be flagged in time.
Regulatory Risks: System misconfigurations or extended downtime can result in non-compliance with AML regulations, leading to penalties.
System Downtime: Bottlenecks and inefficiencies can cause slowdowns or outages, leading to missed or delayed alerts—another potential regulatory breach.
Inadequate Roles and Permissions: Misconfigured roles or inadequate permission settings can result in unauthorized access or missed detection of suspicious activities.
False Positive Alerts: Ineffective detection models and scenarios can lead to a high number of false positives, overwhelming analysts and diverting attention from true risks.
Our Expertise in Conducting AML System Audits on SAS Platforms
We have extensive experience conducting audits on SAS AML platforms, helping organizations uncover misconfigurations and optimize their systems for compliance and efficiency. Our thorough process ensures that your platform is secure, efficient, and operating according to regulatory standards.
Common Findings from AML Audits
Here are some of the most frequent issues we have identified during audits:
High Number of False Positive Alerts: We found that the high number of false positive alerts is often caused by the misconfiguration of scenarios or by changes in the transactional data since the scenarios were first implemented.
Alerts Not Generated: We discovered that critical data quality and completeness issues were preventing the system from recognizing suspicious activity, thus causing regulatory risks.
Platform Security and Permission Issues: We came across multiple organizations where misconfigurations in the system or roles and permissions schema left the platform potentially vulnerable to unauthorized access.
Change Management Issues: We observed in some cases a lack of governance for AML systems and poorly managed system changes that lead to inefficiencies and operational inconsistencies.
A Realistic Timeframe for Your Audit
A comprehensive AML system audit typically takes around 2 months to complete. We work with your team to minimize disruptions while delivering valuable insights and improvements that ensure your system is optimized for compliance and operational effectiveness.
We, at Minago Data Labs, specialize in modernizing and enhancing SAS Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions, helping financial institutions optimize their AML operations, improve compliance, and streamline their processes.
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