How the world of financial monitoring is changing: insights from the ACAMS Assembly in Frankfurt

Volodymyr Havlytskyi, Deputy Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Pivdenny Bank, participated in the ACAMS Assembly in Frankfurt, which is one of the key international events in the field of compliance and combating financial crimes.

Over the course of three days, participants discussed the emerging risks in the areas of financial monitoring, sanctions, AML, fraud, illicit funds movement, and the impact of artificial intelligence on the financial sector.

The main insights of the conference:

• financial fraud increasingly operates as a separate industry – with its own ecosystems, technologies, and international connections;
• banks around the world are actively investing in automation, analytics, and AI solutions to more quickly detect complex schemes and address new threats;
• professional international communities and exchange of practical experience are becoming critically important for the effective operation of compliance functions.

“It is interesting to hear how differently banks operate in different jurisdictions. In many European countries, banks usually have more time to prepare and implement new regulatory requirements. In Ukraine, unfortunately, we often do not have such privileges: sometimes there are only a few months to implement changes related to combating money laundering, while some wartime rules come into force almost immediately. This requires extreme adaptability and quick decision-making,” admitted Volodymyr Havlytskyi.

He also added that the exchange of experience allowed us to state that the Ukraine’s financial monitoring system is a sufficiently developed one:

“Ukraine definitely does not feel like an outsider; on the contrary, the Ukrainian system is even more developed and dynamic than in some European countries in a number of areas – in particular, in the field of sanctions control, openness of data on beneficial owners or adaptation speed.”  

Participation in such international events gives us an opportunity not only to learn from global experience but also to better understand how the global system for combating financial crimes is changing and what approaches will shape the market in the coming years.