Press Release
BAHAMIAN BANKS AND TRUST COMPANIES RECORD HIGHLY FAVOURABLE COMPLIANCE RESULT IN CENTRAL BANK ASSURANCE STUDY
The Central Bank is today releasing an anti-money laundering (AML) compliance report prepared by Evaluasi, a specialist firm comprising some of the world’s leading AML researchers. The Central Bank commissioned Evaluasi to conduct an assurance study or “shadow shopping” exercise on a large majority (more than 75%) of Bahamian internationally active public banks and trust companies.
The exercise involved email approaches to each of a pool of 50 institutions, seeking interest in opening either a bank or trust account. Such exercises, which are common in many industries such as retail trade, are less common in financial supervision. To our knowledge this is the first time any financial regulator has conducted a shadow shopping exercise on an entire class of supervised institutions to check AML compliance.
The results of the exercise included:
According to Governor John Rolle: “This shadow shopping exercise demonstrates that the Central Bank will take a more proactive and more holistic approach to assessing the state of AML compliance within this jurisdiction supplemental to its traditional supervisory tools. We want our industry to demonstrate exemplary AML compliance, which in this instance they have done. This is not to say that our supervised institutions are perfect in an AML compliance sense, but this and many other findings suggest that Bahamian banks and trust companies are among the stronger groups globally when it comes to avoiding new clients who cannot demonstrate clean sources of funds.”
The report is accessible on the Central Bank’s website at www.centralbankbahamas.com, on the main page under Press Releases.
17 May 2023