Financial crime fighters unleash intelligence sharing platform in UK
If you’re a criminal reading this in your diabolically-decorated underground lair, then be afraid. Put that cat down. Stop laughing like a maniac and read on.
“The levels of financial crime are truly staggering”
In response to the evolving threat and cost of financial crime in the UK, the Personal Investment Management & Financial Advice Association (PIMFA) and Financial Crime Intelligence (FCI) have launched their PIMFA-AECIS (assimilated economic crime intelligence system) platform.
The duo says this also follows new UK legislation in the Criminal Finances Act 2017 designed to protect regulated entities when they share information on money laundering suspicions.
Chris Anderson, FCI’s CEO and part-time paladin, adds: “The levels of financial crime are truly staggering and are growing at an exponential rate with emerging threats on the immediate horizon.”
In the UK, £193 billion was lost to financial crime in 2017 with over 630,000 reports to the National Crime Agency over 18 months to December 2017.
This equates to an average of £3,900 per adult with losses occurring at £6,000 per second.
With this dark and deceitful scenario lodged in our pure and noble minds, the pair reckon they have the solution.
Through a controlled and auditable workflow PIMFA-AECIS users can anonymously compare and match against each other’s financial crime data. Where matches arise, organisations can legally go on to share intelligence directly with each other.
It also offers the ability to identify repeat offenders; increase asset retrievals and improve prosecution rates; and provide targeted fraud prevention advice to vulnerable clients and repeat victims.
PIMFA was created in 2017 as the outcome of a merger between the Association of Professional Financial Advisers (APFA) and the Wealth Management Association (WMA) with a history as a trade association going back for 27 years.
FCI was established in 2014 by a management team consisting of finance and technology professionals. FCI is a privately held and funded UK company.
AECIS is the product of three years of software development, legal counsel validation and industry analysis.
