William Byrnes' Tax, Wealth, and Risk Intelligence

Read about Citi’s increase to 30,000 compliance positions by end of year, JP Morgan’s 30% compliance staffing increase and Bank of America’s doubling of audit staffing in last three years….

I’ve written several articles about compliance “whitewashing” on this blog (look under the tab compliance and money laundering). Compliance staffing at many banks has increased since the Patriot Act and renewed enforcement efforts against money laundering. More recently (in the past five years), financial institutions have been called out on dishonest activities with valuation of securities, on dishonest dealings with consumers (see my recent articles about the bank that simply threw away millions of customer mortgage workout files and sent mass mailing denials), on providing financial channels for a government involved in genocide…. I will not go though the entire list.  These cases just stand out as particularly egregious. Compliance looked at, and was in some cases involved with, these transactions.  So, throwing more staff into the cauldron does not quench the fire, nor, hopefully, will this mere fact  satisfy the regulators.

By example, as a regulator, I would need to understand the educational foundation qualification that maps to the employment position. What degree in compliance does the new staff member have? Or is it that persons have been moved into compliance positions without the requisite underlying knowledge to execute the compliance role?

Market Watch at: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/07/14/citi-will-have-almost-30000-employees-in-compliance-by-year-end/

Read about financial institutions / banks compliance department requirements in the 5,000 page treatise and compendium of LexisNexis’ Money Laundering, Asset Forfeiture and Recovery and Compliance: A Global Guide