Strengthening the compliance role of deputized compliance officers of a universal bank

• Main Author: Rivera, Chester Scott M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Ethics and compliance officers; Universal banks; Money laundering; Business Administration, Management, and Operations
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_manorg/72; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdm_manorg/article/1076/viewcontent/2022_Rivera_CompleteVersionETD.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The ABZ Bank’s Compliance Office offers key compliance services to various stakeholders. One of its service objectives is to provide accurate and effective compliance risk assessment by utilizing its Board-approved compliance risk monitoring tools. In particular, the Board-approved General Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Checklist serves as a monitoring tool that facilitates compliance risk assessment used by business units. The Compliance Office [owner of the tool] distributes said checklist every quarter and all deputy compliance officers [users] are required to timely respond and accurately assess the business unit’s compliance. However, the drawback of this checklist is its being generic in nature. Due to this drawback, previous deputy compliance officer’s checklist submissions found to have inaccurate responses, blank responses, or not applicable (“N/A”) responses. These responses brought several concerns to the level of user’s satisfaction, concerned unit’s productivity and to the overall achievement of accurate and effective compliance review assessment. To achieve our objective, this action research aims to strengthen the compliance role of our deputy compliance officers by improving the overall quality of the AML checklist’s design. In Cycle 1, o ur team managed to improve the AML checklist and customized such according to the user's needs. In Cycle 2, we expanded the said checklist by developing the testing procedures and methodologies for proper guidance of deputy compliance officers. Our action research team was guided by the quality management principles of the International Organization for Standardization. After performing the two cycles, the revised AML checklist and testing programs were cascaded during the regular submission. The experience and learning we gained from this study can be used by other organizations who want to initiate quality improvement of their tools and processes for their stakeholders.