Standard Chartered signs for Norkom anti-money laundering software

Under the deal, the bank will install Norkom's transaction monitoring and watch list management software across operations in more than 50 countries.

Norkom says its software willl enable Standard Chartered to detect, analyse, intercept and report suspicious and criminal activity. The system will monitor banking transactions, both in real-time and batch mode, to identify suspicious behaviour. Alerts, prioritised in terms of importance and populated with the necessary information, will then be forwarded to Standard Chartered's analyst teams for investigation.

The bank will also use the platform to screen transactions against various 'watch lists' that have been established by the bank and by the regulatory authorities in each country. The Norkom system will identify transactions to or from individuals, organisations or countries that are viewed as 'high risk', prioritising investigations so that the bank can focus its attention first on those that represent the greatest risk.

Andrew Hunter, group head, compliance and regulatory risk, Standard Chartered, says the Norkom software is " a single solution that allows us to manage our risk globally, yet can be configured for specific in-country requirements, and allows us to achieve economies of scale, streamline our compliance procedures and help protect our business across the globe."

Hunter says the technology will also enable the bank to "maintain a world class compliance operation, based on consistent global processes which can be fine tuned to meet the specific regulatory demands of each country".

Paul Kerley, CEO of Norkom's Technologies, says other implementations have shownh that the system can reduce the incidence of crime by up to 70% and reduce the operational cost of investigations by up to 300%.