Data

With a seemingly never-ending list of household names announcing store closures, it may not come as a huge surprise to learn that we are losing high street businesses at an unprecedented rate. Latest research by Red Flag Alert shows that over 180,000 limited companies operating in the retail sector ceased trading in the years between 2010 and 2017.

Key clients collapsing is one of the most common ways for businesses to become insolvent. In some industries putting up considerable amounts of money before getting paid is standard, and in most industries there is some degree of investment before getting paid. Creating sensible credit limits for clients is essential for every business.

If a business interacts with ‘gig economy’ platforms like Uber, Handy or Airbnb they open up a number of compliance risks. These risks are manageable but you need to be aware of their many forms; here is a quick guide so you can start to assess the risk profile of your business.

Serious concerns have been raised that a regulatory loophole could be enabling international money launderers to register their businesses with Companies House in the UK as part of their criminal activities.

Big Data has the potential to revolutionise how financial institutions conduct their KYC (‘Know Your Client’) due diligence. Internal data collation is not serving most companies, data sets are incomplete and large decentralised systems used by organisations mean that information on a customer can be spread across multiple internal systems.

Company accounts are an interesting piece of the jigsaw when evaluating the solvency of your clients.

AML4D has been drafted to ensure that companies are more accountable for any connection to money laundering or terrorist financing. This will make life harder for compliance professionals as non-compliance can lead to sanctions and reputational damage.