Thursday, 9 June 2005 18:20 EST

World-Check, the leading British provider of a know-your-customer (KYC) intelligence service for finance institutes, and Cellent AG from Stuttgart, the leading provider and producer of the SMARAGD product family for combating fraud in finance institutes, have arranged to enter a partnership agreement to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and to monitor embargoes.

One of the components of the SMARAGD product family is S/Research, which is designed to identify money-laundering activities using intelligent search and evaluation processes, including the pinpointing of suspicious collection points for cash assets. These processes are based on short and long-term checks against business profiles. A further component is S/Monitor. This is used for real-time screening of embargoes placed on foreign payment transactions, as well as to check customer holdings for “bad guys”. These checks can also be performed online as a Web query in order to identify undesirable new customers. The third component is S/Compliance, developed to uncover illegal insider securities trading at finance institutes.

World-Check is a data service that provides structured information about potentialy high-risk financial customers such as money launderers, terrorists, ‘politically exposed persons’ (PEPs) and numerous other high-risk groups. World-Check operates globally, collating data from 234 countries and territories. A wide variety of sources of information, including internationally available sanction and embargo lists and a complex relationship framework, form the basis for KYC research. World-Check services are already being successfully deployed at a large number of finance institutes.

Within the framework of joint user projects conducted throughout Europe, Cellent has now integrated World-Check’s KYC intelligence database using standardised interfaces for SMARAGD/Monitor and SMARAGD/Research. This has enhanced the transaction monitoring and research capability of the SMARAGD product family and made it even more precise.

Today, the World-Check solutions and the SMARAGD product family belong to the most widely deployed applications in the fields of anti money-laundering and monitoring financial sanctions/embargo prevention.

With the standardised interface, both solutions complement themselves perfectly, providing finance institutes, finance intermediaries and other affected institutions with a fast, uncomplicated and cost-effective decision-making tool for identifying potentially risky business relationships in an extremely time-critical environment.

SMARAGD operational in 12 European countries

Meanwhile SMARAGD is established throughout Europe as a fraud combating IT system for finance institutes. It is currently in operation in 12 European countries, while other countries are at either the preparation or planning stage. This is of particular significance to our consulting and configuration activities during deployment. This experience enables our customers to achieve considerable internal cost-savings when implementing our money laundering solutions.

In UK the anti-fraud software is successfully in operation in two banks – the London subsidiary of Deutsche Bank as well as HVB-Group.

World-Check
World-Check is a service offered by Global Objectives Ltd, a UK-registered company. The company was first registered in late 2000 to build World-Check to the specific KYC requirements of several Swiss banking institutions. The company has a network of highly respected professionals across the world that assists bankers, regulators and authorities in reducing risk. Global Objectives Ltd is a privately-owned company.

Cellent AG

Cellent AG is one of the leading consulting companies in the field of information management and information services. Employing around 570 people, the company focuses on the corporate finance, industrial and public service sectors.

With its solutions for identifying money laundering, monitoring embargos and preventing the financing of terrorist activities, the company is the leading European provider in this field.

Customers of the Cellent Finance Solutions business division include Bayerische Landesbank (Bavarian Central Bank), Citibank, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, HVB-Group and Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (Central Bank).

The headquarters of Cellent AG are situated in Stuttgart, Germany.