How the banks can simply avoid money laundering slips: Temenos

The banks’ slow shift away from clunky legacy systems towards standardised software packages will eventually make compliance with things like anti-money laundering legislation easier for both regulators and financial institutions, a financial software executive said.

Temenos’ Asia Pacific head Martin Frick said Australian banks are adopting standardised software packages from the likes of his company, Infosys and Oracle to modernise systems, speed up development and save money.

“Business software is all economies of scale. We have 3000 clients globally and we build a function and can deploy it to all of them at once,” Mr Frick said.

“If you have to build the same function on your own, it takes longer and you need all the testing and development skills in-house. It’s a very cumbersome process.

“Using more software packages will lead to an increase in the quality of software and standardisation of how things are done, so it’s easier for regulators to check. At the moment if you go to a big bank, then the next, you’ll find something very different in each of them which makes it harder to regulate.”

Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer was forced to step down and chairman Lindsay Maxsted brought forward his retirement after AUSTRAC hit the bank with 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering laws and ignoring patterns of transactions consistent with child exploitation.

Temenos provides software for core banking solutions like accounts, loans, deposits, anti-money laundering, wealth solutions and front office management.

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Source: How the banks can simply avoid money-laundering slips: Temenos