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Velocity and Areti Bank Partner to Elevate BSA/AML Compliance with Cutting-Edge Technology

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Puerto Rico, Nov 13 2024 – Velocity, a leading provider of financial crime compliance solutions, is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Areti Bank, a prominent global financial institution, to enhance its BSA/AML regulatory compliance through advanced technology.

The collaboration signifies a bold move in the fight against financial crime as Areti Bank goes live with Velocity’s FinCrime Solution Suite, an innovative platform designed to streamline compliance efforts and reduce financial crime risks. This partnership aims to set new standards for excellence in the regulatory compliance space.

The origins of this collaboration trace back to the PRIBA conference last year in Puerto Rico, where discussions between Tom Pirro, Global Head of Sales at The Alacer Group, and Jose Gomez, CCO of Areti Bank, highlighted the need for a comprehensive solution to strengthen Areti Bank’s compliance capabilities.

Tom Pirro, Global Head of Sales at The Alacer Group, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership:

“We are thrilled to partner with Areti Bank, a forward-thinking institution committed to enhancing its compliance framework with Velocity’s technology. This collaboration is a significant step toward transforming how financial institutions address the complexities of financial crime prevention.”

Gustavo E Nuñez Leyba, Financial Crimes & Sanctions Officer, CAMS, CCI, commented:

“Since launching with Velocity’s FinCrime Suite, we’ve been able to automate our BSA/AML reporting and transaction monitoring functions, which is imperative to grow and scale in a secure manner in a volatile financial industry.”

Key Benefits of the Partnership:

  • Real-Time AML & Fraud Monitoring: Enhanced detection and prevention of financial crimes.
  • Streamlined Compliance Operations: Significant cost reductions through optimized processes.
  • Adaptable & Future-Proof Solutions: Scalable technology designed to meet evolving regulatory requirements.
  • Tailored Tools for Unique Needs: Customizable features that align with Areti Bank’s specific compliance objectives.

With this new partnership, both Velocity and Areti Bank are confident in their ability to deliver tangible value, foster compliance excellence and reduce financial crime risk.

About Velocity

Velocity is a global leader in financial crime compliance solutions, providing financial institutions with cloud-based, low-code AML and fraud prevention tools. The Velocity FinCrime Solution Suite leverages AI, machine learning, and big data to ensure compliance with AML, BSA, and FATCA regulations while optimizing operational efficiency and reducing risk. Velocity supports institutions worldwide in staying ahead of financial crime threats.

Velocity Contact:
Tom Pirro
Global Head of Sales
Phone: 678-951-6346
Email: Thomas.Pirro@alacergroup.com

About Areti Bank

Areti Bank is a 100% digital international bank that focuses on creating a more sustainable world through sustainable banking. It encourages sustainable banking through a conscious use of money, providing financial products and services that positively contribute to sustainable development.

The bank provides a fully-digital and 100% paperless bank account, with the easiest account opening process. Areti bank is for people who care about the role their money plays in the world. They offer a new type of bank with a focus on partnering with people who can help create a more sustainable future.

Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite strengthens its Cannabis Screening by partnering with CRB Monitor’s robust Cannabis Corporate Intelligence Database

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Bellevue, Feb 22, 2023 – The Alacer Group, a consulting and technology solutions company serving financial institutions, has entered into a strategic partnership with CRB Monitor, a comprehensive and centralized database platform covering cannabis industry participants. Combined with CRB Monitor’s curated, standardized and categorized Marijuana Related Business (MRB) database, Alacer’s AI and Machine Learning driven Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite will now be able to equip their customers with best-in-class screening to detect and identify Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRB).

“Cannabis is and continues to be a growth industry that is in need of banking services. For those institutions that support banking the cannabis industry, they rely on high quality information and data to combat fraud and money laundering.” said Richard Paxton, Chief Executive Officer of The Alacer Group. “By partnering with CRB Monitor, a leader in helping institutions manage cannabis-related risk, our transaction monitoring solution will provide best-in-class, multi-layer advanced screening to identify bad actors in the cannabis industry.”
“We are excited to help support Alacer’s platform to help banks identify and monitor their exposure to Cannabis. Our gold standard data paired with Alacer’s industry leading AI and Machine Learning provide a best-in-class total solution” said Steven Kemmerling, CEO, and founder of CRB Monitor. “In light of continued cannabis industry and portfolio growth, we’re pleased to find more ways to help financial institutions across the spectrum of cannabis risk appetite.”

The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued guidance on June 29, 2020, clarifying the requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) for financial institutions providing services to marijuana-related businesses.
The 2020 Guidance applies to all financial institutions (as defined in FinCEN’s regulations). It specifies how financial institutions can conduct due diligence on hemp-related businesses (including CDD and SAR requirements) to comply with the BSA regulatory requirements. Moreover, the 2020 Guidance also supplements the December 2019 joint statement (issued by FinCEN and three other federal agencies) showing how banks provide financial services to marijuana-related businesses.

About The Alacer Group
Founded in 2009, the Alacer Group is a global consulting and technology company that services both the traditional finance industry consisting of banks, credit unions and lenders, the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, including crypto exchanges, coin companies and crypto coin lenders, as well as the gaming industry. The consultants of Alacer Group, who are among the best in the industry, possess a wealth of experience and are visionary problem solvers with a common mission. They excel in creating innovative and game-changing solutions that help institutions, large and small, gain efficiencies and increase market share.

When integrated with its Velocity FinCrime Solution Suite, a powerful and all-inclusive FinCrime solution, The Alacer Group team is uniquely positioned to help a wide variety of financial institutions prevent and detect Fraud and stay in compliance with ever changing Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), and FATCA regulations.

About Velocity
Velocity is a comprehensive financial crime management suite that is built on an advanced AI and ML platform that enables clients to efficiently monitor customer transaction and behavior, identify and prevent fraud, perform sanctions screening and politically exposed person (PEP) matching, know-your-customer (KYC) risk scoring, customer due diligence (CDD), enhanced due diligence (EDD), anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring, perform predictive analytics, and much more. The Velocity FinCrime Suite also offers support for all user functions including alert management, case management, automated workflows, reporting, and dashboards.
Velocity is the ultimate tool to protect your financial institution’s integrity, prevent financial crimes such as fraud, money laundering, human trafficking, and terrorist financing. Velocity ensures institutions worldwide not only meet but exceed regulatory compliance standards.
Velocity is designed to identify and stop bad actors, period!

About CRB Monitor
Founded in 2014, CRB Monitor empowers financial institutions to manage risk and monetize opportunity in the emerging cannabis industry with the best-in-class corporate intelligence platform. CRB Monitor has established itself as a thought leader by developing a taxonomy that clearly and consistently defines and sorts CRBs into relevant risk-based categories and typologies that are relied upon by regulated financial institutions and regulators.

Built to emulate blue-chip corporate intelligence platforms like CapitalIQ, SNL Financial, and IHS Markit, institutional clients rely upon CRB Monitor for enhanced due diligence, onboarding, research, and ongoing monitoring of this emerging, complex, and growing industry.

The incredible platform helps to improve operational efficiency by freeing analysts to spend more time on high-value risk research, not arduous data-wrangling.


Velocity Contact:
Tom Pirro
Global Head of Sales
Phone: 678-951-6346
Email: Thomas.Pirro@alacergroup.com

CRB Monitor Contact:
Steve Kemmerling
CEO
Phone : 844-672-3282
E-mail : Steve@CRBMonitor.com

Velocity Ushers in New Era of Risk Measurement by opening its Country Risk subscriptions for Individual Professionals

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Bellevue, WA USA — (October 14th, 2022) – Velocity announced the launch of their most efficient, convenient and comprehensive Risk Assessment tool ever – the Velocity Country Risk Rating (VCRR) for Individual Professionals. Customers will be able to experience the full line of features with help from Industry-led experts ready to offer personalized support and advice.

Velocity Country Risk Rating platform captures the risk of doing business in a country by taking a comprehensive approach in evaluating specific uncertainties arising within the country from a multitude of risk dimensions. Arising out of various global and systemic factors related to geo-political, macro-economic, social, and legal environments of a country, these uncertainties capture broader regulatory risks germane to a country while placing particular focus in money laundering and terrorist financing risks, among a host of other risks, ranging from global regulatory, to structural terrorism, to systemic regulatory risk and several other risk factors in between.

This Country Risk Rating engine draws its power from a rich data source consisting of 40+ publicly available sources, and 400+ independent sources, including databases, risk perception surveys, sanction lists, country information portals, and relevant current events and surveys, which are utilized by the in-house subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop country risk rating on more than 250 countries using a rare combination of qualitative, quantitative and hybrid data that is normalized for homogeneity, processed for consistency, and corroborated via cross-verifications and triangulations. The multi-faceted country risk rating platform can assess country risk across multiple dimensions, such as for Global regulatory, Narco-terror, Structural terror, Systemic corruption, Systemic regulatory and Systemic legal risk indices. With the best Risk Assessment tool at hand, Velocity’s customers can now use it for a plethora of reasons including Customer Risk modelling for KYC processes, Transaction monitoring for delineating higher risk jurisdictions and Overall enterprise risk assessment and geographical business planning.

The platform introduces a rare combination of granularity, comprehensiveness and depth in risk perception and calculation enabling companies to engage in multiple functionalities, including Granulated Risk categorization, Customized Views, Comprehensive Global Coverage and Active Monitoring of Risk Events. Due to the highly modular, transparent and equation driven calculations that the VCRR platform employs, all risk dimensions are readily apparent to the user, providing significant flexibility in either including or excluding a specific risk dimension, based on user’s application requirements. At its core, the Velocity Country Risk Rating model is a stand-alone reality driven comprehensive risk management tool that can be used by all types of corporate entities and institutions.

With its robust, nuanced, calibrated and standardized Risk Rating assessment, Velocity Country Risk Rating tool is the perfect solution for institutions looking to manage the inherent risks in their international activities. Velocity’s hybrid approach combines qualitative constructs with quantitative scores, making the Risk Rating model and country database highly effective in capturing, categorizing and combating not only stand-alone ML/TF risks but also other types of risks, such as systemic regulatory, systemic legal, global regulatory risk, etc. The Country Risk Rating model goes through a rigorous process and follows CMMi5 Level industry process standards. Expanded granularity in risk description provides the benefit of capturing comprehensive risk for the country being analyzed. The risk review is based on verifying the quality of data, comprehensiveness of coverage, consistency of methodology, and robustness of risk ratings. Thus, providing a multi-dimensional risk view that assesses the potential for a lack of enforcement and support of various emerging regulatory regimes, while enabling corporations and financial institutions to develop and embed fully functioning risk and compliance frameworks.

About Velocity
Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite is a powerful and scalable set of modules designed specifically for financial institutions to comply with AML (anti-money laundering), BSA (Bank Secrecy Act), and FATCA regulations with ease and simplicity. The solution is built using AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), and Big Data capabilities, which help to reduce risk and improve efficiency.
Velocity is designed to meet international regulatory compliance accurately and consistently. Each module is highly scalable and offers seamless integration, which helps management to improve efficiency and productivity.

About The Alacer Group
Founded in 2009, The Alacer Group is a business and IT consulting firm providing a comprehensive suite of products and services for financial institutions world-wide. Headquartered in Bellevue, WA., Alacer works with clients to increase their quality and productivity of operations, reduce risk, and achieve compliance.
The Alacer Group is a trusted resource for Fortune 1000 companies and growing organizations. With the application of the right mix of people, process, and technology, Alacer helps to improve efficiency and deliver results – fast.

Alacer Group Partners with Nominodata to Boost its Robust FinCrime Database

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Industry technology leaders combine to eradicate FinCrimes

SEATTLE, Oct. 6, 2022 — The Alacer Group, a consulting and technology solutions company serving financial institutions, has entered into a strategic partnership with Nominodata, which provides software and comprehensive data services that support the AML, money-laundering, HIDTA HIFCA, and financial industries dealing in fraud, human trafficking detection, and compliance. Combined with the Alacer Group’s AI and machine learning driven Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite platform, this partnership brings together two influential service providers with the common goal of leveraging their combined expertise for delivering best-in-class innovations and productivity-boosting solutions to better eradicate financial crime.

“Identifying businesses and individuals who commit financial crimes requires a continually evolving solution suite and current, high-quality data,” said Richard Paxton, Chief Executive Officer of The Alacer Group. “Our Velocity FinCrime Solution Suite paired together with Nominodata’s comprehensive, global database not only enhances our solution, but propels us ahead of the competition, and more importantly, gives us a significant advantage in our fight against financial crimes.”

According to a report conducted by Lexis Nexis in 2021 that studied the costs of financial crimes compliance found that the total projected cost of financial crime compliance in the U.S. and Canada for 2021 was $49.9 billion (USD), a 19 percent increase from 2020, and a 58 percent increase from 2019. The report’s summary states that the “digital transformation is a game changer for financial crime compliance operations. It requires a more sophisticated, multi- layered solution approach to mitigating risk and ensuring compliance.”

“This is an exciting partnership for Nominodata, our unique datasets when combined with the Velocity platform creates a leading-edge solution. Our partnership offers a unique value proposition allowing our customers to do more with less cost overhead. This integration demonstrates that our nimble approach and low cost data services really are a game changer for technology companies like Alacer” said Al Macdonald Founder/CEO of Nominodata.

About The Alacer Group
Founded in 2009, the Alacer Group is a global consulting and technology company that services both the traditional finance industry consisting of banks, credit unions and lenders, and the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, including crypto exchanges, coin companies and crypto coin lenders. The Alacer Group’s top-tier consultants are a highly experienced group of visionaries and problem solvers that share a unique mission and a knack for bringing game-changing AML and KYC ideas to life.

When integrated with its Velocity FinCrime Solution Suite, a powerful and all-inclusive FinCrime solution, The Alacer Group and its consultants are uniquely positioned to help a wide variety of financial institutions prevent and detect Fraud and stay in compliance with ever changing Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), and FATCA regulations.

About Nominodata
NominoData is a solutions company formed to help clients with worldwide identity, compliance, and risk management issues associated with modern day commerce. Our team leverages their expertise into innovative and productivity-boosting solutions that revolutionize their field. NominoData supplies both plug-n-play and integrated software solutions supporting the AML, money-laundering, HIDTA HIFCA, and financial industries dealing in fraud, human trafficking detection, and compliance.

Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite now features Vital4’s Data to Protect Against Financial Crime Risk

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The Alacer Group, a business consulting company specializing in the financial services and technology industries, has entered a partnership with Vital4, a global leader in AI driven AML data and technology solutions, to enhance their Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite – a powerful all-inclusive solution for all things FinCrime. The Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite helps financial institutions prevent and detect Fraud and comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), and FATCA regulations and now with the addition of Vital4’s originally sourced Adverse Media and PEP data, businesses will be fully enabled to identify individuals and entities who pose a financial crime risk.
“Quality data is crucial for any analysis – especially in the world of AML. Vital4’s high quality and comprehensive data set will not only help Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite identify potential bad actors but enhance our ability to provide a complete and accurate view for our clients,” said Richard Paxton, Chief Executive Officer, CEO of The Alacer Group.
Vital4’s CEO, Kristin Stafford says “We are thrilled about the partnership with The Alacer Group. Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite aligns with our fully automated and comprehensive data collection for AML/KYC compliance.”

About Velocity
Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite is a powerful and scalable set of modules designed specifically for financial institutions to comply with AML (anti-money laundering), BSA (Bank Secrecy Act), and FATCA regulations with ease and simplicity. The solution is built using AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), and Big Data capabilities, which help to reduce risk and improve efficiency.
Velocity is designed to meet international regulatory compliance accurately and consistently. Each module is highly scalable and offers seamless integration, which helps management to improve efficiency and productivity.

About The Alacer Group
Founded in 2009, The Alacer Group is a business and IT consulting firm providing a comprehensive suite of products and services for financial institutions world-wide. Headquartered in Bellevue, WA., Alacer works with clients to increase their quality and productivity of operations, reduce risk, and achieve compliance.
The Alacer Group is a trusted resource for Fortune 1000 companies and growing organizations. With the application of the right mix of people, process, and technology, Alacer helps to improve efficiency and deliver results – fast.

About VITAL4
VITAL4 provides global screening solutions to help organizations maintain regulatory compliance and mitigate third-party risk. As a cloud software platform made fast and powerful by proprietary machine learning technology, VITAL4 was developed to bring the agility of SaaS services to enterprise compliance regimes and eliminate slow update cycles, shallow source pools and the human-error risks of manual legacy processes.

VITAL4 was built with four fundamental concepts in mind: compliance, accuracy, global insight and value.

Velocity Contact:
Tom Pirro
Global Head of Sales
Phone: 678-951-6346
Email: Thomas.Pirro@alacergroup.com

VITAL4 Contact:
Suzanne Durden, Director of Marketing
706-248-5877
info@vital4.net

Alacer’s Velocity Partners With SuperChoice To Tackle Fraud And Enhance Transaction Monitoring

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(February 2nd, 2022) -Alacer’s Velocity to provide FinCrime solutions to enhance the transaction monitoring and fraud detection mechanism.

With the increasing use of technology and digital transactions, there comes a high risk of fraud. Financial institutions need to stay alert and are required to monitor, investigate, and report any suspicious transactions to the regulatory authorities. Alacer’s Velocity acts as a shield against all fraudulent activities.

SuperChoice by the adoption of Alacer’s Velocity Fincrime solution is all set to strengthen its digital transaction monitoring efforts against AML compliance and fraud.

‘The evolution of digital transactions, and the sheer volume being made in near real-time, has meant the detection and prevention of fraud as close to the transaction time as possible is crucial. We partnered with proven experts in this space to give a greater level of fraud detection for our clients.” says Andrew Callus, Chief Product Officer, SuperChoice.

Alacer’s Velocity Transaction and Behavior Monitoring System is a highly flexible solution, specifically designed to meet the regulatory standards with ease. It is super convenient to use and helps to detect and provide alerts to the regulatory authorities.

About Velocity

Alacer’s Velocity FinCrime solution is a powerful and scalable set of modules designed specifically for financial institutions to comply with AML (Anti-money laundering), BSA (Bank Secrecy Act), and FATCA regulations with ease and simplicity. The solution is built using AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning), and Big Data capabilities, which helps to reduce risk and improve efficiency.

Velocity is designed to meet international regulatory compliance accurately and consistently. Each module is highly scalable and offers seamless integration, which helps the management to improve efficiency and productivity.

About The Alacer Group

Founded in 2009, The Alacer Group is a business consulting firm, headquartered in Bellevue, WA. With an elite network of experienced consultants and practitioners, the company is focused on four areas, i.e., financial services, healthcare, technology, and government to provide consulting services, technology solutions, and manage staffing.

The Alacer Group is a trusted resource for Fortune 500 companies and growing organizations. With the application of the right mix of people, process, and technology, the group helps to improve efficiency and deliver results faster.

About SuperChoice

SuperChoice is Australia’s original FinTech Company and a leader in reg tech, founded in 1996. It provides superannuation clearinghouse and digital transaction solution services, including single touch payroll, to the Super Funds, Payroll Software Providers, and Employers.

SuperChoice is privately owned by Potentia Capital and the CPS group. They provide solutions that are focused on making things simpler, easier, and streamlined for everyone within the superannuation ecosystem.

The Alacer Group successfully implements its end-to-end financial crime solution-Velocity, at the Atlantic Community Bankers Bank (ACBB)

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Alacer Velocity’s Suspicious Activity Monitoring, Customer Due Diligence & Customer Risk Rating, Cannabis Screening, Case Management, and Automated Reporting, modules now supply end-to-end coverage to secure ACBB and its 350+ associated banks against financial crime.

Pennsylvania, USA — (January 31st, 2022) –  The Alacer Group, a technology-led business transformation organization offering specialized solutions to prevent financial crime has successfully implemented its all-inclusive Financial Crime Solutions Suite, Velocity, at Atlantic Community Bankers Bank (ACBB). The live Alacer-Velocity system now monitors all customer accounts and transactions of ACBB and its client banks.

Financial crime has become a growing worry in the United States over the last 30 years. To address this, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Bank Secrecy Act, and the Patriot Act impose legislation and policies in the United States to combat financial crime such as money laundering, terrorist financing, bribery, corruption, and more. Financial institutions, particularly banks, are obligated to adopt AML procedures to comply with these rules and regulations. When businesses do not comply, they face loss due to financial fraud and attract heavy penalties and restrictions that could result in the revocation of charters. The Velocity- FinCrime Solutions Suite, with its Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence technology, not only safeguards the ACBB and its associated banks against financial crime but ensures that the banks continue to adhere to the highest compliance regulations imposed by FinCEN, BSA, and the Patriot Act.

Since the stakes were so high, the ACBB, underwent a rigorous selection process. The ACBB team evaluated several small and big names in the financial crime solutions industry and had a eureka moment with Velocity. Checking all their requirements, Alacer-Velocity, a 360o FinCrime Solutions Suite that employs Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence-led investigations, monitoring, and reporting for fast and efficient regulatory compliance, was the solution they had needed. The competition was not over yet, after beating the competition in the selection process, the Velocity team was challenged with an almost impossible deadline. In little to no time, the Velocity team had to inspect the bank’s current system, identify the gaps, clean and segregate their data and finally implement the solution throughout the ACBB. Astonishingly, not only was the Velocity team able to integrate the financial crime suite in time but they were able to do it under budget as well!

Using Alacer-Velocity FinCrime Solutions Suite, the ACBB is now effectively boosting its anti-financial crime operations. Since Velocity is powered by the latest Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies and offers multiple detection methods, it now assists the ACBB, and its 350+ associated banks achieve AML compliance while reducing risks and increasing efficiency. Thanks to the robust architecture of Velocity, along with its multiple detection methods, customized workflows, and advanced analytics, the solution now acts as a powerful shield between ACBB’s system and cybercriminals and a useful weapon to fight against financial crime.

The ACBB has employed various modules of Velocity, including,

  • Velocity TBMS (Transaction and Behaviour Monitoring system) that monitors all customer transactions.
  • Velocity KYCR (Know Your Customer and Risk) for monitoring all existing customers periodic reviews, existing and new customers risk rating, and onboarding new customers.
  • Velocity ICMR (Integrated Case Management and Reporting) supports ACBB by consolidating all alerts and case workflows in one location, supplying a way to quickly develop, investigate, evaluate, approve, and file automated SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) reports.
  • Velocity CSR (Cannabis Screening and Reporting) aids ACBB to decrease false positives by analyzing entities in CRB monitor lists against transaction and customer data.

About ACBB

Founded in 1983, Atlantic Community Bankers Bank (ACBB) delivers correspondent, payments, and lending services exclusively to financial institutions. As a trusted partner, the company aggregates, innovates, and integrates services with over 400 shareholder and client financial institutions. Their solutions drive efficiency, profitability, and relevance among businesses and consumers. ACBB was formed, owned, and is governed by community-focused financial institutions.

About Velocity
The Velocity Financial Crimes (FinCrime) Solution Suite (FSS) helps financial institutions comply with Fraud and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations with ease and simplicity. The solution uses multiple detection methods and an advanced analytics engine powered by Hybrid Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help institutions, large and small, achieve compliance while reducing risk. The Velocity Software Suite includes several data disambiguation tools, such as in-built Entity Resolution, designed to help financial institution get their data right. Core features of Velocity include real-time sanctions screening, fraud monitoring, customer due diligence and risk rating, AML transaction monitoring, cannabis screening, and centralized alert-case-SAR management with real-time dashboards, and automated regulatory reporting and analytics.

Alacer Group’s Velocity AML Suite Selected for Deployment in Prominent Bangladesh Banks

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SEATTLE, WA–Marketwired –  The Alacer Group, dedicated to helping business leaders accelerate performance, quality, productivity and profitability, today announced that its Velocity AML Suite has been chosen by three prominent banks in Bangladesh to improve AML case workflow and security. After an extensive search process, Mercantile Bank Limited, Social Islami Bank Limited (SIBL) and Meghna Bank selected Alacer’s Velocity AML Suite to ensure robust KYC/CIP onboarding, sanctions screening, payments interdiction and transaction profiling, all key operational areas that support local and international anti-money laundering efforts. The banks selected the Velocity solution for its ability to be quickly deployed, its robust reporting features and for the delivery of consistent and full compliance with AML regulatory requirements.

All implementations are currently underway through Alacer’s local technology partner, DataSoft Bangladesh Limited.

About Velocity
Alacer’s Velocity AML Suite is a powerful and scalable set of system modules specifically designed for facilitating AML case workflow and reporting. Velocity combines smart case management, sanctions screening, transactions monitoring and KYC/CDD functionalities. Each component in the suite is scaled to meet local and global regulatory requirements accurately, consistently and predictably. Velocity offers seamless integration with core banking systems and can be used on its own to perform KYC/CDD, alerts reviews, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, real-time payments interdiction and periodic reviews. The system is purposefully designed to meet international regulatory compliance standards and its powerful reporting capabilities gives management insights on effectiveness, productivity and resource utilization.

About DataSoft Bangladesh Limited
DataSoft is a CMMi level 5 in progress, ISO 9001:2008 certified leading software product and services company in Bangladesh. Since 1998, DataSoft has established a successful track record of delivering innovative and cost-effective technical services to customers in the corporate and public sectors. Fortune 500 companies have selected DataSoft for mission critical public services, IT services such as e-Payment, Customs House Automation and Port IT operation (CTMS), automation of commercial banks, and the deployment of a SaaS model on a private cloud to more than 2200 microfinance banks. For more information, please visit the website at http://datasoft-bd.com/.

About The Alacer Group
Headquartered in Bellevue, WA, with offices in New York and Dallas, The Alacer Group is a business consulting firm focused on four practice areas: big data, technology, finance and healthcare. Offering expert consultants around the globe, Alacer works with companies to resolve their needs quickly and smartly, resulting in positive outcomes. Alacer’s experienced anti-money laundering specialists design, develop, and implement effective process and system solutions for financial institutions. We help clients strengthen AML and compliance controls while improving efficiency through the application of the right mix of people, process and technology. For more information, please visit the website at  The Alacer Group or find us on LinkedIn.

DFSS Drives Results for Financial Services Firms

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Lean Six Sigma remains a popular and effective tool to improve efficiency in financial services operations. However, many financial institutions are finding that identifying and reducing incremental defect variability does not fully maximize the full spectrum of improvement opportunities. To achieve a larger return on investment, many organizations are turning to Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to re-examine, radically recreate and often build new processes.

The Potential for Bigger Returns

Richard Paxton, co-founder and CEO of Seattle-area consulting firm The Alacer Group, said that the interest in DFSS as a preferred approach to process design and reengineering has grown significantly over the past few years. “In financial services, a typical DMAIC project can deliver somewhere between $500,000 and $600,000, whereas DFSS projects can be upward of $20 million,” he said. “The key is knowing where and how to apply the technique.”

Paxton has been in the financial services industry for more than 10 years. Previously, he was senior vice president of Operational Excellence at JPMorgan Chase, and senior vice president, Global Quality & Productivity Process Excellence at Bank of America.

“Ten years ago, many financial institutions were wary of using DFSS tools and thought of them primarily for application in manufacturing industries,” Paxton said. Additional apprehension centered around a misperception that massive technology deployments had to be part of DFSS solutions. Today, he added, DFSS is being embraced for its ability to provide robust designs for reengineering existing processes and products and developing new ones.

“Financial services today are very similar to large technology organizations; relying upon a complex network of interrelated processes and systems to deliver quality products and services for their customers,” Paxton said. “By taking an end-to-end view, and designing across functional boundaries, new levels of performance and quality can be realized. This is where DFSS is a perfect fit, and can help bridge the gap between business and technology.”

Similar to Lean and DMAIC, DFSS does take time, and moves with a unique feel and pace. Depending upon the scope and level of integration, a large-scale design and build can take 12 months to complete, Paxton said. His firm recently finished a project where they completely redesigned a core business process for a large financial institution. The project included the implementation of a new workflow environment, support processes, user interfaces and system integrations. From start to finish, the project took 18 months to complete. The payoff, though, was substantial – a flawless launch, increased capacity in the front office and significant back office efficiencies, Paxton said.

In another recent DFSS project, one of The Alacer Group’s large national banking clients found potential fraudulent activity and incoming suspicious activity reports (SARs) had increased 10-fold. Quality issues and high variability costs associated with these SARs had resulted in $80 million in annual vendor and contracting expenses.

Working with a local processing specialist, and with compliance and legal staff, a process team used the DFSS approach for process design to streamline SAR processing and optimize staffing models. The design was also built to accommodate future SAR types and regulatory changes.

As a result of the DFSS improvements, the client experienced $6 million per month in expense savings and was formally recognized by regulators for having a “best in class” SAR processing process. An additional $8 million in annual savings through a vendor was also identified, Paxton said.

Identifying Root Cause, Redesigning the Process

Another tactic for tackling financial services issues is to start with the Define, Measure and Analyze phases of DMAIC up front to identify root causes, and then apply DFSS to redesign the process to better meet the needs of the customer. “By understanding how and where defects in a process are generated, you can design out the opportunity for defects to occur and design in controls,” Paxton said.

For instance, Alacer recently analyzed the mortgage process for secured lending products at a Fortune 10 organization. The process was highly inefficient, cumbersome and lacked standardization, resulting in rework, increased risk exposure and loss of business. The project team began by analyzing the end-to-end process through the application of DMAIC and Lean to identify defects and waste. After the income verification process and credit guidelines were identified as the two most important improvements via DMAIC and Lean analysis, the DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify) roadmap of DFSS was then selected to design a new automated income verification process.

By adopting new support processes and modifying credit guidelines, the client’s end-to-end mortgage processing time was reduced by 30 percent and overall risk exposure was lowered, freeing up $500 million in capital for funding new loans.

“Over the years, the functions of banking have remained the same – sales, fulfillment, and service,” Paxton added. “What has changed is the way they are delivered. What will differentiate financial institutions in the future is their ability to deliver products and services customers want, how they want it and at a level of efficiency that makes sense for the business. Using DFSS, in conventional and unconventional ways, can help organizations deliver value for their customers and their bottom line.”

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