Deutsche Bank Moves Toward ‘More Holistic’ Anti-Financial Crime Team

Deutsche Bank is changing its anti-financial crimes and compliance teams after years of scrutiny and enforcement, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (June 24).

The changes, effective July 1, “are part of a shift away from fixing specific compliance shortcomings and toward tackling regulatory challenges in a more holistic and efficient manner,” WSJ said, citing a bank memo.

Deutsche Bank has faced substantial fines in the U.S. and Great Britain in recent years. Earlier this year, the bank agreed to pay $130 million to the U.S. government over alleged bribery and commodity-trading schemes.

These changes come after Deutsche Bank transferred responsibilities for compliance functions from its chief administrative officer to its chief risk officer.

“The changes appear to be an effort to increase the clout of the bank’s anti-financial crimes unit, which is responsible for ensuring compliance with anti-money-laundering and anticorruption laws and economic sanctions, among other regulations, compliance experts say,” wrote WSJ. “Deutsche Bank declined to make an executive available for an interview about the changes.”

The bank is not only more clearly defining responsibilities and identifying who they belong to, but they are also downsizing their councils and committees in the chief administrative office, Chief Administrative Officer Stefan Simon said in the memo.

Deutsche Bank said it will also pay more attention to core areas like risk assessment, transaction monitoring and controls testing to better prevent financial crimes.

Earlier this year, Germany’s central financial regulator, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), ordered the bank to strengthen its anti-money laundering controls. An announcement from the authority said the order was issued “to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing” and that Deutsche Bank must “adopt further appropriate internal safeguards and comply with due diligence obligations, in particular with regard to regular customer reviews.”