“Tens of billions of pounds of corrupt money are being laundered through the UK each year” - Transparency International.

With London’s banks becoming an epicentre for money laundering, Route Trading Ltd proudly present MoneyRouter - a proactive and effective solution to the growing problem of illicit money transfers taking place in the Capital.

Launching this September, the new software enables banks to reduce the risks involved in home remittance, providing some much needed relief to the global financial infrastructure. Not only will MoneyRouter strengthen the safety of global payments, allowing financial institutions to set their own parameters in accordance with Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Regulations, but it will also drastically decrease the banks potential vulnerability to threat.

On almost every UK high street is a kiosk offering to “send money home”. Overseas workers often transfer part of their earnings to their families abroad, and as migration has increased all over the world, the total value of these ‘home remittances’ to emerging economies is now double that of direct foreign aid. However, because much of the sector is unregulated, it has also become notorious for its links with money laundering and terrorism.

In the last few years, many banks have been refusing, rejecting and closing MSB accounts due to fear of being penalised. According to a World Bank study from 2015, over 50% of money transfer companies have had at least one bank account closed, and 28% of principals – the people who receive money – and 45% of handling agents – who pay out overseas – now have no bank account at all. In the UK and US in particular, large numbers of MSB bank accounts have been closed by major high street banks in the past few years.

Banks in particular, fearful of fines, have been missing out on significant revenues and contributing to financial exclusion by exiting the sector because of:

  • Inadequate visibility over MSBs' activities of transferring money on behalf of their customers;
  • Lack of specialist AML monitoring systems to help banks deal with the special case of MSB on-boarding and their real-time transaction monitoring;
  • Increased regulatory emphasis on using the risk-based approach to AML monitoring;
  • Lack of awareness among MSBs, of money laundering regulations and techniques used by criminals to launder money in the Remittance Industry;
  • Multiple terrorist attacks by returning Islamic State fighters and radicalised individuals.

MoneyRouter will not only give financial institutions the confidence to open new overseas accounts, but it will give new hope to money transfer companies who often find it difficult to open a new facility with high street banks. Featuring REAL-TIME processing, a first for the remittance sector, MoneyRouter is the only system to issue a warning signal PRIOR to the authorization of a transaction, almost eliminating room for error and preventing a fraudulent transaction from taking place.

“Existing bank and MSB software systems are not able to identify high risk money senders and receivers in a TIMELY manner, because the banks’ and MSBs’ systems are not integrated. As a result, the identification of high risk money senders and receivers is done on a manual basis, by banks asking the MSBs for the Identity and Address documents of MSB customers and manually conducting searches to verify them. Often, by the time this manual process is completed, the money transfer transactions have already been processed by the MSBs, leaving the banks vulnerable to potential high risk senders and receivers.” Says Co-Founder, Taimoor Iqbal.

Joining forces with LexisNexis® Risk Solutions UK Ltd allows MoneyRouter to offer banks a greater insight of international customers and MSBs, whilst providing a much clearer understanding of the funds’ origin and full journey history. The instant end-to-end, identity verification system checks both the company and the individuals involved in a money transfer against the most up-to-date compliance databases, allowing banks to approve only the transactions that meet the standards they set. This full compliance with legislations not only benefits the banks financially, but it also helps protect and retain the institutions delicate reputation.

“MoneyRouter’s unique integrated approach to MSB monitoring is the first in the remittance industry and its seamless integration of MBS bank accounts and global risk databases means that banks can easily deploy it without disrupting their existing monitoring systems (designed for other categories of their direct clients). The configurable risk rules and case management dashboards and workflows, gives banks complete control over what they want to monitor, provides complete audit trail and above all enables them to implement the all-important risk-based approach to AML monitoring as required by international anti-money laundering regulations.” Adds Taimoor Iqbal.

Bringing a much needed, shared regulation to the market, whilst eliminating the need for costly surplus compliance processing, MoneyRouter also opens the door to an unexplored potential earning power for UK banks and the global financial sector.

http://routetrading.co.uk/