SAS unveils potent weapon in war on money laundering

Latest SAS® Anti-Money Laundering improves investigations, saves time

CARY, NC, Feb. 28, 2012 /CNW/ - Banks can now increase efficiency while improving investigations and SAR quality, brandishing the latest version of SAS Anti-Money Laundering to better manage suspicious financial activity. Enhancements from the leader in business analytics software and services include predictive analytics, an enriched regulatory reporting console, and additional risk-based scoring techniques. 

"Enhancing the quality of alerts by applying predictive analytics is a significant process improvement over the typical transaction monitoring approach," said Rodney Nelsestuen, senior research director at CEB TowerGroup. "This helps institutions lower false positives, reduce analyst fatigue, and improve the quality of investigations all of which are increasingly important in the face of tougher regulatory actions and stiffer fines for poor anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring."

SAS Anti-Money Laundering has unique predictive analytics improving alert quality while minimizing false positives, leading to a more effective and meaningful investigation. This helps escalate alerts to investigation more accurately, so investigators can focus on the most egregious risks, while reducing costs associated with model governance. 

The updated regulatory reporting console in SAS Anti-Money Laundering supports multiple forms and languages, and interacts with new electronic filing systems being adopted by global financial intelligence units. An improved user interface speeds investigations by displaying all relevant customer information based on user roles, rights and privileges, to display key performance indicators of the most recent trends.

Banks can harness risk-based scoring during the onboarding process with new features in SAS Anti-Money Laundering. The risk classification process regularly assesses a customer's risk profile in a single data pass, based upon transactional behavior or association with high-risk attributes. That means institutions can monitor high-risk peer groups uniquely. End users can modify or create unlimited scenarios through a point-and-click interface, monitoring more risks and behaviors while bypassing trusted accounts and parties posing no threat. 

Laurentian Bank uses SAS® for financial crime detection trifecta

Laurentian Bank has experienced major growth in recent years. Laurentian Bank is the first bank to combine SAS Anti-Money Laundering with two other solutions from SAS Enterprise Financial Crimes for Banking, making it a true leader in the fight against financial crime in Canada. 

"Our competitors know us for our flexibility and our agility, qualities that let us react quickly and allow us to, among other things, efficiently implement new processes to fight financial crime, thereby securing our constantly growing operations," said René Trépanier, Vice President, Compliance, Operational Security. "Our goal in implementing this system is to quickly obtain an overview of our various business lines so as to better recognize and identify fraudsters."

SAS Anti-Money Laundering is part of SAS Enterprise Financial Crimes for Banking, a technology infrastructure for preventing, detecting and managing financial crimes across lines of business within today's banks. More than 100 institutions use SAS for AML, including: AG2R La Mondiale (France), Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (Japan), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (Australia), Danske Bank (Sweden), Forex Bank (Sweden), Gazprombank (Russia), Hana Bank (Korea), HDFC Bank (India), Industrial Bank of Korea (Korea), Kookmin Bank (Korea), Landbouwkrediet - Crédit Agricole (Belgium), Laurentian Bank (Canada), Medmera Bank (Sweden), Northwest Federal Credit Union (US), Resona Group (Japan), Riyad Bank (Saudi Arabia), Samba Financial Group (Saudi Arabia), Samsung Securities Co. (Korea), Skandinavisk Data Center (Denmark), Soneri Bank (Pakistan), Sovereign Bank (US), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (Japan), Union Bank (US), and Volvofinans (Sweden).

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW^®.

The Canadian subsidiary of SAS has been in operation for 23 years. Headquartered in Toronto, SAS employs 263 people across the country at its Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City and Montréal and offices. www.sas.com

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