Technology: Norkom deploys financial crime and compliance solution

Norkom deploys first financial crime and compliance solution to meet Australia's AML/CTF legislation

Sydney (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - St. George Bank, the fifth largest retail bank and one of the top 20 publicly listed companies in Australia, has chosen Norkom Technologies to help it comply with the recently enacted Anti-Money Laundering / Counter-Terrorism Financing Act (AML CTF Act 2006), becoming the first Australian bank to deploy a software solution to meet these compliance standards.

Norkom Technologies is the leading provider of financial crime and compliance solutions to the global financial services industry. Its advanced anti-money laundering and anti-fraud software solutions will help St. George to detect and prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism by enabling the bank to monitor and analyse every transaction and customer interaction across its customer base for suspicious activity, including fraud. When unusual activity is identified, prioritized alerts will be automatically issued to a team of investigators to begin a comprehensive, step-by-step investigation process to uncover potential criminal behaviour.

According to Steve Bryant, St. George AML/CTF Program Director, "At St. George, we are committed to complying with both the letter and the spirit of the AML/CTF regulation. To achieve this, we are implementing all of the policies, processes and procedures to ensure full compliance with this legislation. Norkom's software suite not only enhances our protection against financial crime, but also enables us to ensure effective legislative compliance. We chose Norkom because of its proven technological ability, its highly referenceable global client base, and its commitment to provide a truly world-class service locally, here in Australia."

Bruce Quick, Norkom's Director of Sales & Business Development for Asia Pacific, says, "We are proud to become one of the first financial crime and compliance software providers in Australia to deploy a live solution to meet the exacting standards of the AML/CTF Act and are delighted to have shared this experience with St. George. Now we can ensure that all our Australian clients can benefit from this experience by ensuring that their regulatory and business needs are met, both now and into the future."

Norkom Technologies opened its Australian offices in Sydney in 2006 and Melbourne in 2007 to help the company to deliver a truly local service. Since then, the company has cultivated strong presence in the Australian financial services marketplace, with seven other banks following St. George's lead in selecting Norkom as their vendor of choice for financial crime and compliance software solutions.

About St. George

St. George is Australia's fifth largest retail bank and one of the top 20 publicly listed companies in Australia, employing over 9,000 people.

Its national operations span all aspects of the financial industry including retail banking, institutional & business banking, and wealth management. At the Bank's core is a close relationship with its customers and this remains the cornerstone of future strategies, an important tradition that distinguishes St. George from other Australian banks.

About Norkom Technologies (www.norkom.com)

Norkom Technologies (AIM: NORK.L, IEX: NORK.IE) enables financial organisations to take intelligent action, control defences, and evolve strategies against fraud, money laundering, and other types of financial crime.

By combining a unique investigative technology platform with deep domain expertise, Norkom has established a solid track record of reducing financial losses, protecting users' reputations, improving operational efficiencies, and lowering the cost information technology.

Norkom serves clients in over 100 countries, including HSBC, Credit Agricole, DnB Nor, Erste, Fortis, Rabobank, Standard Chartered Bank, Swedbank, Washington Mutual and Western Union.

Media contact: Fiona McLoughlin, Marketing Manager, Norkom Technologies, Tel: +353-1-8739612 or email fiona.mcloughlin@norkom.com
Bruce Quick, Director of Sales & Business Development Asia
Pacific, Tel: +61-2-9255-0488 or email bruce.quick@norkom.com
SOURCE: Susanne

Norkom Technologies and Datamonitor host free webinar

Sydney, (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - Norkom Technologies, leading provider of financial crime and compliance software to the global financial services industry, has announced that it will hold a free webinar with guest speaker, Damien Shaw-Williams, senior analyst with Datamonitor, at 2pm EST on Thursday, 6th March 2008.

Entitled, "Securing the future: Enterprise-wide financial crime management and beyond", this 45-minute virtual event will explore new research, conducted by Datamonitor and Norkom, which reveals that a radical change is taking place in the way financial services providers manage regulatory compliance and financial crime.

The webinar will examine how leading financial service providers are embracing an enterprise-wide risk-based approach to financial crime management.

The new research also claims that:

More than half of all global tier one financial service providers have consolidated AML and fraud prevention across the enterprise 47% have centralized management structures by establishing Financial Intelligence Units, with a further 14% planning to do so within the next 12 to 24 months.

Risk-based approach and customer due diligence are the new priorities.

According to Paul Kerley, Norkom's CEO, "As we predicted, enterprise-wide financial crime management is now a reality in most major financial institutions, with those organisations seeing significant improvements in detection rates and cost reductions as a result. Organisations are now focusing their attention on successfully adopting a risk based approach - not just for AML as the regulator requires - but for all areas of financial crime. And they expect these two new priorities to deliver even greater business benefits".

To participate in this free webinar, simply click on the link below to register:
http://www.norkom.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/325
Other international time zones:
11.00am to 11.45am HKT / SGT
12.00pm to 12.45pm JST / KST
2.00pm to 2.45pm EST

About Norkom Technologies

Norkom Technologies is a market-leading provider of innovative financial crime and compliance solutions to the global financial services industry.

Norkom's software has been described as 'outclassing our competitors' by the analyst group, Celent, and as an 'effective enterprise wide financial crime management solution' by Gartner. Used by clients in over 100 countries, including HSBC, Credit Agricole, Fortis, and Rabobank, Norkom is proven to reduce financial losses, protect reputation, improve operational efficiencies and lower the total cost of ownership. Norkom has operations across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Media Contact:
Contact Fiona McLoughlin, Marketing Manager, Norkom Technologies,
on +353-1-8739612 or email fiona.mcloughlin@norkom.com
To find out more, visit http://www.norkom.com

SOURCE: Norkom Technologies Ltd
CONTACT: Fiona McLoughlin,
Marketing Manager,
Norkom Technologies,
+353-1-8739612 or
fiona.mcloughlin@norkom.com
Web site: http://www.norkom.com

COPYRIGHT © 2008 - ANTARANEWS

Norkom software to boost Swedbank`s defences vs money laundering

Sydney, (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - Leading Northern European bank, Swedbank, is to strengthen its defences against financial crime and enhance its compliance with anti-money laundering regulation by choosing market-leading software from Norkom Technologies.

The bank will be able to use Norkom's software across its group operations in all the markets where the bank is present to increase its protection against financial crime and to ensure effective compliance with national and international regulations including the 3rd EU Money Laundering Directive.

The software will monitor Swedbank's transactions across all customers and accounts to detect, investigate, manage and report suspected money laundering attempts.

In addition to improving detection of suspicious activity using sophisticated analytics, the software's step by step investigation workflows and comprehensive alert and case management capabilities will deliver greater efficiency to the investigation process, significantly reducing costs and improving productivity.

Commenting on the agreement, Katarina Brome, head of operational risk and compliance at Swedbank said: "We have chosen to implement Norkom as an integral part of Swedbank's strategy to combat money laundering and ensuring long-term regulatory compliance. The Norkom solution will be a key ingredient to accurately detect and efficiently investigate money laundering activities.

"Norkom has a strong international track record, a well-proven AML solution combined with competent and highly committed people. The flexibility of the solution to be extended into other areas of financial crime is also an important factor for Swedbank," she added.

Norkom's chief commercial officer, Liam Griffin, commented: "As well as meeting the bank's current anti-money laundering requirements, in the future Swedbank will be able to benefit from the flexibility of our technology platform and its ability to address other types of financial crime across the enterprise. This provides Swedbank with the security of knowing that it can cost effectively evolve its use of the Norkom platform as its business needs change and grow."

The contract with Swedbank builds on Norkom Technologies' expanding blue chip client base, which includes leading financial services organizations such as HSBC, Credit Agricole, DnB NOR, Fortis, Rabobank, Standard Chartered Bank, Washington Mutual and Western Union.

Norkom's award-winning software has been described as 'outclassing its competitors' by the analyst group, Celent, and as an 'effective enterprise wide financial crime management solution' by Gartner. Norkom was also recognized as 'The Best Technology Solution' in Complinet's 2007 compliance awards, the number one for AML and fraud in the OpRisk & Compliance magazine's software rankings survey and 'Best AML Product' in the Banking Technology Awards.

About Norkom Technologies

Norkom is a market-leading provider of innovative financial crime and compliance solutions to the global financial services industry.

We enable organisations to take intelligent action, control their defences and evolve their strategies against financial crime. By combining our unique financial crime and compliance technology platform with our deep domain expertise and extensive client experience, we offer a comprehensive set of solutions which can be scaled and customized to meet clients' current and future needs -- from anti-money laundering and customer due diligence to enterprise investigation of all types of fraud.

Used by clients in over 100 countries, including HSBC, Credit Agricole, Fortis, Rabobank, Standard Chartered Bank, Washington Mutual and Western Union, Norkom is proven to reduce financial losses, protect reputation, improve operational efficiencies and lower the total cost of ownership. Norkom has operations across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

To find out more visit www.norkom.com
SOURCE: Norkom Technologies
CONTACT: Hilary Duffy,
Marketing Manager,
Norkom Technologies,
Tel: +353-85-121-9414,
hilary.duffy@norkom.com
Web site: http://www.norkom.com

COPYRIGHT © 2008 - ANTARANEWS

Enterprise Wide Financial Crime Management becomes mainstream

Leading Financial Service Providers are Embracing an Enterprise Wide Risk Based Approach to Financial Crime Management, Says Datamonitor & Norkom More than half of all major global financial service providers have consolidated AML and fraud prevention across the enterprise Almost half have centralised management structures by establishing Financial Intelligence Units Risk-based approach and customer due diligence are the new priorities

Sydney (ANTARA News/PRNewswire-AsiaNet) - New research, carried out by Datamonitor on behalf of Norkom Technologies, confirms that a radical change has taken place in the way financial services providers manage regulatory compliance and financial crime. Our respondents -- senior decision makers in global financial services institutions -- are combining their management of both activities on an enterprise wide basis. This change was predicted by the same research programme one year ago, though at that stage, only an enlightened minority had begun the consolidation process.
Today's research makes it clear that enterprise wide management is now a firmly established business approach.

Almost three quarters (73%) of respondents -- leaders in global tier one institutions -- confirm that they are managing anti-money laundering (AML) in tandem with other types of financial crime. More than half (53%) have achieved this on an enterprise wide basis, embracing all geographies and business lines.

20% are progressing towards this goal, having achieved it in some territories.
47% of respondents say they have established Financial Intelligence Units in order to overcome the organisational barriers traditionally associated with enterprise wise management and to centrally manage investigative resources. A further 14% plan to do so within the next 12 to 24 months.

"As we predicted, enterprise wide financial crime management is now a reality in most major financial institutions, with those organisations seeing significant improvements in detection rates and cost reductions as a result," says Norkom's CEO, Paul Kerley.

"Organisations are now focusing their attention on successfully adopting a risk based approach -- not just for AML as the regulator requires -- but for all areas of financial crime. And they expect these two new priorities to deliver even greater business benefits."

87% of institutions report that they have experienced or expect to experience improvements in crime detection capability as a result of their enterprise wide approach; 80% say they've experienced or expect cost savings.

But 93% agree that the business benefits of a risk based approach to customer due diligence and ongoing monitoring will be even greater.

"A risk based approach -- in which the extent of monitoring attention given to an individual account or customer is directly commensurate with the degree of business risk they pose -- is now a regulatory requirement within AML," explains Kerley. "But far sighted organisations have recognised the potential for commercial benefit, too, and will extend this approach to all areas of financial crime. Costs will reduce as detection accuracy and investigative efficiency improves.

Customer responsiveness will also rise, since low risk new business will be able to be brought onto book more quickly."

To obtain your copy of the research report: 'Securing the Future Against Financial Crime: Enterprise wide management and beyond' email marketing@norkom.com

Norkom is a market-leading provider of innovative financial crime and compliance solutions to the global financial services industry.

Used by clients in over 100 countries, including HSBC, Credit Agricole, Fortis, Rabobank, and Washington Mutual, Norkom is proven to reduce financial losses, protect reputation, improve operational efficiencies and lower total cost of ownership. Norkom has operations across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Norkom media contact:
Hilary Duffy,
Marketing Manager,
Norkom Technologies,
Tel: +353-85-121-9414
hilary.duffy@norkom.com
http://www.norkom.com
CONTACT: Hilary Duffy,
Marketing Manager of Norkom Technologies,
+353-85-121-9414,
hilary.duffy@norkom.com Web site: http://www.norkom.com
SOURCE: Norkom

COPYRIGHT © 2008 - ANTARANEWS