LONDON–International regulators plan to write new banking rules for checking whether a potential customer poses money-laundering or terrorist financing risks.
The move is part of efforts by the world’s central banks to stop cross-border banking from fragmenting under the weight of tougher anti-money-laundering rules that have prompted some lenders to pull out of markets, Reuters reported.
The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), made up of central bankers from across the world, said last week that lenders want greater clarity on how to comply with mandatory anti-money-laundering checks of customers, Reuters reported.
The aim is to create “know-your-customer” utilities, or data bases, that would obtain information on customers from across the banking sector for use by all banks. “This would save time and money by avoiding many checks on the same customer,” the news outlet stated.
“CPMI said it would ask the International Organization for Standardisation to define the basic set of information that all such utilities would collect and that all banks have to be ready to provide to other banks. Banks have also asked for assurances from regulators and law enforcement authorities that lenders can rely on information from utilities for complying with anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules,” Reuters reported.
CPMI said the Basel Committee of banking supervisors and the global Financial Action Task Force will look at ways to support the use of utilities, Reuters said.