We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our AML onboarding platform and service into the British community. Today’s launch sees us move into our Shoreditch office with 25 employees and with UK Country Manager Simon Luke leading the charge.
Money laundering has been thrown back into the spotlight with recent sanctions against Russian diplomats and oligarchs making the news. The public is waking up to the fact that “the road from Moscow to Kyiv passes through Belgravia”, and Transparency International has found that at least £1.5bn of UK property is owned by Russians accused of financial crime or with links to the Kremlin. The 2021 Pandora Papers leak exposed hidden wealth, tax avoidance and money laundering by some of Britain’s (and the world’s) most powerful people.
Anti-money laundering has never been more important.
At First AML we help everyday people access the financial system, while limiting criminal exploitation.
From when we started our company 4 years ago, we’ve cared about limiting the crimes that come from money laundering – both at the smaller end of the scale, or the larger, more disastrous ones that fund criminal activity.
At its core, money laundering enables criminals to profit from both ‘minor’ crimes and fund abhorrent ones such as human and drug trafficking, and terrorist activities. The social impact is obvious, while economically, it negatively impacts tax revenue, public confidence in government and GDP (annual global estimates are $US800B-$US2T).
Despite this, the burden of compliance lies with businesses and individuals. Current Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes, known as Customer Due Diligence (CDD) or Know Your Customer (KYC), are intrusive, repetitive and highly manual, costing excessive time and money while causing frustration. This is what we address.
Our platform automates and simplifies the CDD/KYC process. Our clients need only provide their client’s name and email. Our simple user interface combines with our unique pre-verified database to reduce repetition, cost and friction. The end user (your client) has a positive experience while our clients meet compliance requirements and minimise risk.
Commenting on our launch, our CEO, Milan Cooper, says: “our customers love our solution and it’s proving to be the best approach to streamlining customer due diligence. With groundbreaking investigations around tax havens and money laundering across multiple countries, the AML compliance regime is a key priority for accounting, law and real estate.”
We’re excited to offer regulatory technology built for reporting entities, removing the manual burden, and making compliance faster and more accurate. Regtech is usually aimed at the major banks. However, if we want our economy to grow, we have to help the next layer of financiers become more efficient, and to combat money laundering through law, accounting and real estate firms. And of course with the current focus on London as a Russian money-laundering hub, small to medium sized businesses need solutions to manage compliance with increasing regulation and threats.
We can’t wait to start working with you, Britain.
About First AML
First AML streamlines the entire anti-money laundering onboarding and compliance process. Backed by real expertise, its cloud-based KYC Passport allows complex entities to share their verification across multiple companies and geographies, at their discretion.
Making an otherwise complex and manual onboarding process simple for clients and cost effective and compliant for businesses, First AML delivers efficiency and time savings, protecting reputations, and enabling companies to be on the right side of history in the face of global threats.
Keen to find out more? Book a demo today! No time for a long demo? No problem. See what First AML can do for your business in 2 minutes – watch the short demo here.