The number of jobs on banks’ anti-money laundering teams is up 54 percent in 2014 year-to-year in the U.K. following a string a scandal and heavy fines for British Banks.
Standard Chartered reported earlier this month agreed that they expect to pay yet another fine to the New York banking regulator for failing to disclose suspicious transactions. This comes a little under two years after their last major fine to an American agency, the last one being $332 million for violating sanctions. HSBC paid almost $2 billion in fines for aiding and abetting the Mexican drug trade on behalf of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
HSBC, after a multi-billion dollar error, is now seemingly getting very serious about complying—there are nearly 25,000 risk and compliance specialists on the staff—or 10 percent of the organization.
The cost of good anit-money laundering specialists is up in, according to the Financial Times, as are the requirements. Banks are now requesting that their oversight people all speak at least two languages.
