The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is building a digital platform that lets banks share information on customers and transactions in order to tackle money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing.
Called Cosmic (Collaborative Sharing of ML/TF Information & Cases), the platform will enable financial institutions to securely share information on customers or transactions, where they cross material risk thresholds.
MAS is working with six major commercial banks - DBS, OCBC, UOB, SCB, Citibank and HSBC - on the platform, which it claims is the first of its kind in the world, enabling information to be shared in a structured format that allows for seamless integration with data analytics tools.
The central bank will run Cosmic and is promising legislation to ensure information sharing is permitted only for the purpose of combating money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing.
Set to launch in the first half of 2023, the platform will initially focus on three key financial crime risks in commercial banking: abuse of shell companies, misuse of trade finance for illicit purposes, and proliferation financing.
Over time, MAS plans to extend Cosmic’s coverage to more financial institutions and focus areas and make some aspects of sharing mandatory.
Loo Siew Yee, assistant MD (policy, payments and financial crime), MAS, says: "Cosmic will significantly enhance our financial institutions’ ability to detect and curb suspicious activity, while minimising the impact on legitimate actors.
"The information sharing framework is designed to target serious criminal behaviours and allow FIs to more quickly detect the bad actors to purge and deter them."