Justice FCU provides financial services to more than 45,000 employees of the U.S. Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and law enforcement associations nationwide.

Designed as a lower-cost alternative for financial institutions with up to $70 billion in assets, Fortent Hosted AML employs the same Fortent technology that is endorsed by the American Bankers Association and is used by larger multinational institutions around the world. The hosted offering provides rapid implementation of Fortent's transaction monitoring application to financial services companies looking to accelerate their compliance cost savings and reduce IT overheads.

Fast implementation - lower cost

"A top priority for us in choosing an AML solution was having a system that would be up and running fast - with minimal impact on our in-house IT resources," remarked Susan Baugh, Risk Manager at Justice FCU. "At the same time, we wanted to deploy the most effective AML solution available. With the successful implementation of Fortent Hosted AML, we have met both of these goals.

"Fortent was able to get the system fully operational for us within our challenging timescales and on budget. We are already seeing the significant benefits that the system delivers, such as the high quality of the alerts," said Ms. Baugh.

By assuming responsibility for the bulk of the data transformation and system deployment, Fortent can typically install the hosted AML monitoring capability within four months. Usually, the financial institution itself performs these complex and time-consuming functions, which can take up to 10 months to complete.

Greater compliance burden for smaller FIs

Even though all financial institutions grapple with managing AML compliance, the AML burden on small- to mid-sized financial institutions can be exceptionally painful, as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson underscored last summer in public comments on the need to scale back certain AML regulations. Smaller organizations often cannot afford sizeable technology investments and accompanying IT staff levels, driving them to seek lower-cost options with the same monitoring capabilities.

Fortent Hosted AML delivers the same level of suspicious transaction monitoring performed by Fortent's AML software that financial institutions install "behind the firewall" within their own operations. Fortent provides its hosting service through a highly secure, IBM SAS-70 compliant data center. Hosted AML can monitor transactions in all business lines and is part of Fortent's suite of hosted compliance solutions, including KYC and Fortent Inform, available to banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies.

Nimbly meeting regulatory expectations

"Our customers can see immediate ROI with hosted solutions," said George Faux, Group Executive, Client Relationship Management, at Fortent. "With no capital expenditure or lengthy implementation process, institutions can be nimble in meeting regulatory expectations and stay focused on their core competencies, rather than on owning and managing software."