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Case Study

Compliance Support

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SUMMARY

Avantage Reply supported the Compliance department of an internationally operating Private Bank / Financial Services Company in moving its European headquarters between countries. This involved PMO support, regulatory analysis and assessment of the Bank’s Compliance functions across several locations in the Eurozone, the UK and other European countries.

 

CUSTOMER GOALS

The bank’s Compliance team required assistance with the review of the current compliance processes among all its European branches, with a particular focus on AML. The primary goals were to complete the following:

  • Develop an understanding of the existing Compliance processes and documentation across European and UK locations
  • Map these to existing, currently applicable requirements for (i) the current Eurozone headquarters and (ii) the local locations
  • Determine how the move to the headquarters’ new location will change these requirements, due to the change of jurisdiction and due to the change in organisational structure
  • Identify how existing Compliance processes and documentation will need to be updated and/or improved
  • Implement relevant changes

CHALLENGES

Challenges arose given that the management of the team was relatively new, so familiarity with local teams, processes and documentation needed to be established quickly. Additional complexity arose from the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Bank’s activities (across the Eurozone / UK / wider Europe). Furthermore, the change of headquarters was causing uncertainty, and existing staff were extremely busy with project work related to the change of headquarters while needing to continue BAU activities.


SOLUTION

Avantage Reply provided a mix of resources, to provide PMO / project management, Compliance SMEs / jurisdiction-specific SMEs and additional resources as required, to support the programme of work.

Support was provided with:

  • Establishing and supporting different working groups
  • Provision of expertise, including from (i) Compliance and AML specialists, (ii) experts in regulation of the relevant countries, as well as (iii) professionals who had moved European bank headquarters between jurisdictions in the past
  • Support in reviewing and assessing the existing processes and documentation framework, as well as writing new policies and changes to existing procedures

By supporting the department on those projects and their daily tasks, the team was able to counterbalance the increased workload during the period until a new team member could be hired without neglecting any aspect of their responsibilities.