Products >> Panther

Today, most Financial Institutions globally, and many non-financial institutions, are required to identify and report transactions of a suspicious nature to the Financial Intelligence Unit in the respective country. An FI must perform due diligence by verifying a customer's identity and monitor transactions for suspicious activity. Trade Finance in a Bank encompasses transactions within the country as well as cross-border.

Earlier, Trade Finance has not been taken in to account as a high risk area for Money Laundering. This perception has changed over a period of time as there is an increasing pressure from International regulators and bodies. Countries like United States, European Union and United Kingdom and other bodies like United Nations are imposing Sanctions on various Persons, Countries, Commodities, Currencies and Entities.
These International / cross-border transactions, involve Banks located in different locations like Issuing Bank, Advising Bank, Negotiating bank etc., for LCs. Similarly each Trade Finance product has different parameters associated to it to be screened.
This is one of a very compelling reason for the Banks to have an effective Sanctions Screening System.

Money Laundering / Terrorist Financing

Banks are an important channel for cross border transaction which makes it more vulnerable to abuse for the purpose of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. FATF report on Trade based Money Laundering clearly highlights the risk associated with it. There should be continuous risk assessment that the Banks should adopt for AML Compliance.
Banks should have a relevant control mechanism to screen all transactions before it is executed. Trade Finance controls consists of screening part of the transactional information against lists of known or suspected terrorists issued by these regulators and bodies.

Risks associated with non-compliance

An effective compliance is not only a Regulatory compulsion, but involves other factors. Mostly non-compliance leads to many risks like
       Reputational Risk – Loss of reputation, customers moving away
       Operational Risk – Day to day transactions getting affected, Surprise Audits by Regulators etc.
       Legal Risk - Penalties, Regulatory Sanctions etc

How iSolve addresses these challenges!

PANTHER SCREENING SUITE

A powerful Screening Suite to screen multiple parameters against multiple lists. This helps Financial Institutions to have an effective Anti Money Laundering / Counter Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) Compliance as insisted by Regulators.

PANTHER - Trade Finance:

Banks play a very significant role in preventing Money Laundering / illegal transactions. Regulations & introduction of new regulations by Government & Statutory bodies adds more responsibilities to the bank on daily basis. Risk can be highly mitigated by implementing an effective Compliance System & Processes.
Trade operations form a substantial part of every bank's global business footprint. By its very nature, it has the maximum exposure to sanction listed individuals and entities - companies, banks, currencies, commodities, vessels, ports. Central banks and regulators have mandated all financial institutions to implement robust screening systems and processes to ensure absolute compliance. Failure often leads to severe financial penalties on the organization and individuals. Often the millions of dollars saved in penalties by correctly identifying and reporting just one suspect transaction justify the effort and investment in a superior trade sanctions system.

Panther is a Trade Sanctions Screening system. Currently in use at large, global banks, PANTHER for TRADE FINANCE is a system that is specifically developed for trade operations.

PANTHER - Name Screening:

All Financial Institutions are required to identify and report transactions of suspicious in nature to the Financial Intelligence Unit India (FIU-IND). The organization must perform Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) verifying customers’ identity, by screening their names against recommended Watch list by regulators. RBI, SEBI and IRDA insist FIs to use UN Terrorist list from United Nations Security Council website for screening. They also need to monitor transactions suspicious in nature and report it to FIU-IND.

Many Financial Institutions today do a post facto screening during customer acquisition, which makes them highly vulnerable for getting a bad customer entering their system.

Keeping in mind the challenges that the Financial Institutions face today, iSolve has released a modified version of PANTHER to suit the requirement of the domestic BFSIs. This helps them to check the background of the customer against the UN Terrorist list or any other watch lists during the customer acquisition policy.

It also creates an efficient platform for Anti Money Laundering & Counter Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) Compliance.

FEATURES

Ideally suited for any size of FIs, PANTHER can screen millions of names, passport number, PAN and Date of Birth against multiple lists. This ensures that the Watch list filtering, forms an integral part of the organization’s Customer Acquisition Policy.

PANTHER BULK - A powerful core module that can screen millions of existing customer names against multiple watch lists. The source file could be an XLS or XML file with the names of the customers to be screened.

        Can be made automated screening every month with the new customer names also.
       Publishes the search output as report.
       Desktop version with more security built-in.

PANTHER iReport - Used for generating Cash Transaction Reports (CTR) and Suspicious Transactions Reports (STR) according to the FIU Reporting standards.

        User defined cash threshold for identifying Cash transactions.
       Generates .TXT files as required by FIU and the summary sheet.
       Auto population of common fields like company name, BSR code, Principal officer etc.

PANTHER SCREENING SUITE Features & Benefits:

        Users can select ‘Exact’ or ‘Fuzzy’ button for ambiguous names
        Complete Audit Trail to record all transactions for regulatory purposes
        Rudimentary Workflow for maker-checker to ensure better compliance
        Online PAN* verification can be integrated in to our application
      Supports 50+ International and Domestic Watch lists including OFAC-SDN, UN Terrorist, EU Sanctions, HM             Treasury, SEBI Debarred, Interpol list and much more.
        Generates CTR/STR as per regulatory format and other reports

*to be subscribed by client for accessing ITD server

PANTHER SUITE can be customized to any level according to specific requirements of the Customer.

List Management Service:

Compliance department users spend more time in checking for updated Watch lists in the Internet. This brings down their productivity leading to increase in number of back logs. iSolve addresses this issue by providing a easy subscription service. FI can subscribe for the required lists from iSolve.

        Help users to focus more on their core activity than spending time to check for updates
        Flexible subscription option
        Dedicated team in iSolve to check for updates and update the lists
        Flexible updates sending options

If you are a Financial Institution who wants to be compliant on AML/CFT by having a powerful screening of your client database or want to understand the desired level of protection and support your daily operations give us a call today, and let us discuss what more we can do for you.