ADCB's goal is to become one of the UAE's most modern and service oriented banks. Investing in technology is seen a key part of this process. The Payment Gateway project at ADCB is intended to give the bank greater control of its payments infrastructure. As part of this project, the bank looked for improved compliance with international regulations and conventions on anti-money laundering as laid down by the UAE Central Bank.

"We realised that ADCB would benefit from a specialised solution that could automatically filter all types of financial transactions and messages to prevent payments to or from blacklisted individuals and organisations," said Steve Dickens, Chief Operating Officer at ADCB, "We conducted an extensive review of the available solutions on the market. It was clear that OFAC Guard from ACE Software would bring significant benefits by ensuring compliance, reducing processing time and minimising our exposure to risk. Its close integration with PELICAN - an intelligent payment processing platform would ensure a comprehensive and end-to-end payment solution."

There is growing worldwide pressure on banks to comply with regulatory requirements to ensure that they do not process payments with or for individuals or entities that have been black-listed by the authorities. The OFAC list is prepared and maintained by the US Treasury Office; however OFAC Guard also scans messages against other national and international blacklists.

OFAC Guard uses intelligent natural language processing features to quickly and accurately scan financial messages for all types and formats, including non-standard unstructured message types like e-mails and faxes. It intelligently identifies blacklisted entities in transactions, with very low false positive rates and highlights them before transactions are processed.

ADCB is planning to implement other wweb-based modules of the PELICAN solution suite to manage its corporate straight through processing and cash management in the future.

"ACE Software's experience in delivering effective solutions for efficient payments processing and in particular anti-money laundering, demonstrates why we are the first choice for companies looking for a product that can be deployed quickly and generate immediate benefits, "said ACE Software Solutions CEO Parth Desai, "We will be working closely with ADCB to roll out other modules of PELICAN, ensuring that the bank can progressively reduce risk, increase compliance and remain competitive."