Are Compliance Officers Obligatory?

By: Karla Valdés

In this post we are going to address a very relevant topic for financial institutions, Compliance Officers in the area of ​Money Laundering Prevention (PLD in Spanish). This role has gained importance in the past few decades and is very important for regulation and our society.

What does a compliance officer do?

The Compliance Officer is the person responsible for overseeing the proper implementation and operation of the Money Laundering Prevention System in an organization.

Compliance Officers review cases of possible money laundering, analyze unusual alerts detected by the monitoring systems, send regulatory reports, and also escalate cases that need to be analyzed and/or approved by their corresponding government bodies, among other responsibilities.

In terms of their professional profiles, they must be skilled in both technical areas and daily tasks, they must have experience in risk management, master internal policies, implement new regulations, have analytical skills, and be able to train staff, among other capabilities.

In addition to their role within the organization/institution, I consider compliance officers to be very important for society, they are in the trenches makings sure that the resources that enter the financial system are reviewed, and that vulnerable activities come from legal sources. For this reason, the process of interviewing and understanding the client, which is carried out by the first line of defense, is so essential. The task of understanding the client is not limited to entering them into the system, monitoring and reviewing must also be constant throughout the life of the client in the organization/institution, their operations are always monitored to verify that the profile of expected operations matches with what the client declared at the beginning of the agreement.

Who must have a compliance officer?

Banks, Brokerage Houses, Insurers, Fin Techs, SOFOMES and vulnerable activities must have a Compliance Officer for PLD.

Is there a regulatory certification?

The National Banking and Securities Commission issues a Certification on the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing, in order to guarantee that the institutions have highly qualified personnel to deal with these issues.

If you are thinking of taking your certification or renewing it, the new date is June 23, 2021 and you must complete the procedures indicated by the CNBV.

Are there other certifications?

There are international certifications such as CAMS (Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist) which is a global standard in the prevention of financial crime.

At Miranda Compliance we have certified and specialized professionals with experience in handling complex cases of corruption networks and illicit operations, as well as in the implementation of risk mitigation controls.

I hope this post has been useful, and if you want to reinforce or implement your PLD program, we will be happy to support you.

C O N T A C T

Miranda, Compliance