Monex: Mexico's AML Leader

For several years, financial institutions worldwide have faced the strictest regulatory standards for security and anti-money laundering measures. Since September 2001, anti-money laundering rules have become stricter in order to prevent illegal acts, especially those that finance terrorism. Observing and complying with these regulations have become requirements for financial institutions that want to win the trust of their investors – not to mention the regulatory authorities.

In Mexico, this subject generated great interest for a financial group operating at the national and international levels. The aim was to meet global standards, as well as to lead Mexico's corporate community in detecting and preventing money laundering from occurring.

That company is Grupo Financiero Monex – founded over 20 years ago as a brokerage firm and which operates today as a brokerage, fund operator, mortgage provider, pension fund provider, and a bank with 43 offices in Mexico and around the world. Monex not only needed to invest in measures in order to increase its ability to detect money laundering in daily transactions, but also to increase technological solutions to fight crime globally.

For Grupo Financiero Monex, it is important to maximize data management to provide early warnings that prevent money laundering. The firm also values its responsibility to maintain a strong investigating interface, forecasting capacities and administrative tools.

Grupo Financiero Monex chose SAS Anti-Money Laundering as part of its strategy and, for over nine years, has operated a Communication and Internal Control Committee dedicated to preventing money laundering, providing substantial training for its personnel and achieving ISO 9000 certification for the anti-money laundering process.

SAS Anti-Money Laundering makes it possible to identify, classify and reveal suspicious financial transactions automatically. This process guarantees fast access to critical information. It also helps identify patterns more accurately, allocate resources optimally according to the requirements of each company, access audits and provide investigators with adequate and significant information.

Financial crime, such as money laundering, is growing every day. Consequently, governments worldwide are maximizing their efforts to reduce this growing threat. As a result, financial institutions and their boards are under regulatory scrutiny investigating activities carried out under their management.

Penalties and fines are rising, as is costly litigation and the imprisonment of those involved – all of which threaten corporate reputations and shareholder value.

Grupo Financiero Monex evaluated the solutions available on the market that could fulfill anti-money laundering requirements. "We chose SAS as our anti-money laundering solution provider because they have a very interesting customer base, worldwide presence, very reliable support and, above all, because our financial counterparts in the USA and Europe consider SAS to be the best solution to this crime," says Xavier Ramos Yañez, Systems Corporate Director of Grupo Financiero Monex.

The benefits Grupo Financiero Monex has seen since implementing SAS include obtaining a transaction analysis of transfers and operations that can generate a history of each customer, greater data processing and real-time warnings.

According to the board, Monex found that companies with better practices for detecting crime in time build more trust with their customers.

"I would give SAS 10 out of 10," Ramos Yañez says. "The best thing is that it has data analysis engines for highly complex scenarios, which will be most beneficial to us in terms of intelligence in the long term. As time passes, SAS will become a more powerful and beneficial tool for us, making it possible to detect more complex behavioral patterns, and we will therefore be able to reduce fraudulent transactions and enable our customers to trust us."

SAS generates a history of each of the transactions carried out, which is compared with the normal activities of each customer. The goal is to offer each customer safe transactions, minimize false positives in transactions, make the institution reliable to regulatory authorities and allow Grupo Financiero Monex to adapt more quickly to the new world regulations.

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