A Holistic Approach to Financial Crime Prevention

Money laundering and the financing of international terrorism pose a major threat for banks and insurance companies. While money launderers and terrorists introduce more and more illegal funds into the legal circulation, national and international laws and directives, such as the Third Anti-Money Laundering Directive, USA Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act, FATF 40+9 Recommendations, are being developed further to counteract the changing typologies and employed methods.

Alpha Bank Greece has approached these challenges and has implemented a centralized AML-(Anti-Money Laundering) system designed to protect the Group’s assets and reputation against money laundering in its subsidiaries in South East Europe: Alpha Bank Albania SHA , Alpha Bank Bulgaria, Alpha Bank AD Skopje, Alpha Bank Romania and Alpha Bank Srbija AD, through its IT Services provider, Alpha Supporting Services. After evaluating and testing different systems, Alpha Bank chose FICO TONBELLER’s flagship product suite: Siron® Compliance Solutions. The software of the system and the implementation of the project was realized by Printec Greece in cooperation with FICO TONBELLER, while the infrastructure is implemented and maintained centrally in Greece by Alpha Bank. The imple-mented solution included the modules: Siron® Embargo (sanction list screening), Siron® AML (Anti-Money Laundering), Siron® RAS (Risk Assessment), Siron® KYC (risk rating during customer acceptance), Siron® MCA (completeness check of SWIFT-messages) and Siron® RCC (Risk & Compliance Cockpit).

Convincing Short Implementation and Professional Roll-Out

Printec and FICO TONBELLER completed the project in just nine months. One of the main challenges was to deliver custom modules on time for each country due to respective Local Central Banks controls. Additional challenges were divergent character sets for localization, time zones and working hours etc., all of which was to be integrated with a unified central system and software infrastructure for economies of scale. Yet another challenge was the culture of the respective banks in each country and the remote implementation effected from Alpha Bank‘s headquarters in Greece. Implementation started with the delivery of specific modules to Alpha Bank Romania and Alpha Bank Albania SHA and it continued in Alpha Bank Srbija AD, Alpha Bank Bulgaria, and Alpha Bank AD Skopje. The remaining modules were delivered in two stages, first to Alpha Bank Romania, Alpha Bank Albania SHA and Alpha Bank Srbija AD, then to Alpha Bank Bulgaria andAlpha Bank AD Skopje.

The company

Alpha Bank Group is one of the leading banking and financial services groups in Greece, offering a wide range of services including retail, SME and corporate banking, credit cards, asset management, investment banking, private banking, brokerage, leasing and factoring.

With more than 900 branches, the Alpha Bank Group is also active in the international banking markets, with presence in Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Albania, F.Y.R.O.M. and the United Kingdom.

Success StoryAlpha Bank

Alpha Bank Benefits from Maximized Control and Protects its Reputation

The main innovation is the Bank‘s ability to verify all messages (financial & domestic) of its Subsidiaries through Siron Embargo. Printec has developed an additional system to convert domestic messages to SWIFT financial messages without changing the original. Thus, the system handles all financial and domestic message types (xml, xml2, txt) through different channels (between folders and MQ series) and matches them with both EU and OFAC sanction lists. This maximizes control (interbank, third-party banks, and within the organization) for all countries that have implemented the solution.

One of the most important benefits for Alpha Bank was its increase in reliability in both inter-bank checks and in the minds of customers.

Fair Isaac Germany GmbH

Zeppelinstr. 2 - 464625 Bensheim, GermanyTelefon: +49 6251 7000 - 0Fax: +49 6251 7000 - 140www.tonbeller.com | www.fico.com

“With FICO TONBELLER’s AML platform, we are taking an important step towards updating and enhancing our systems in order to comply with regulations and safeguard the Bank from illegal money traffi-cking in a cost-effective way. We feel that our control system has been strengthened with regards to interbank checks. We are very pleased with the quality, professionalism and speed of the Printec implementation team.“Christos Lygeros, Compliance Division Manager, Alpha Bank

Printec Group of Companies

164, A. Syggrou Ave. 17671 Kallithea, GreeceTelefon: +30 210 9209152Fax: +30 210 9214356www.printecgroup.com