Earthport achieved high STP rate while effectively mitigating risk

The Company

Earthport is a major payments company that provides its clients with access to a global payment network. The company processes $11 billion worth of transactions in over 65 countries each year.

Industry: Payments
Product: Transaction Monitoring

The Challenge

Earthport operates within a complex payments ecosystem that is exposed to varying degrees of risk. They work with a wide range of businesses — from small remittance companies to large global banks — all around the globe, many of which operate in high-risk areas. They needed a way to effectively monitor a high volume of transactions for financial crime risk without compromising on the efficiency of their internal processes or the customer experience.

The different business models operated by Earthport (FX, international settlement, etc.) each bring unique risks and associated compliance challenges. Against this complex backdrop, Earthport has committed to meeting aggressive growth targets and achieving the highest straight-through processing (STP) rate of the industry, while still identifying and reporting suspicious behavior. Furthermore, tight operating margins mean that operational efficiency is a must: manual resolutions must be kept to a minimum (with few false positives), and any alerts must be quick and easy to handle.

Earthport found that existing solutions in the market were not sufficiently flexible to fit their requirements and business model. Running out of options, they considered building a solution inhouse but knew it would be difficult to meet the high standards set internally and by the regulator while also continuing to devote sufficient technical resources to other core business priorities.

Earthport can specify which types of scenarios they’d like to screen for and, once configured properly, automatically monitor different segments of clients against those scenarios. This means Earthport can monitor risk more effectively while reducing the unnecessary false positive alerts that less tailored solutions would produce. It also empowers the business to meet differing compliance regime requirements and apply a proper risk-based approach to their business.

The ComplyAdvantage platform, which is designed to adapt to constantly changing rules, can be tested and tuned to meet current needs and improve efficiency over time. This ability to continually evolve the solution has ultimately freed up the compliance team’s time to focus on making decisions rather than executing manual tasks. Earthport has also improved reporting by utilizing the customizable case management and audit trail capabilities within the ComplyAdvantage platform.

Since going live with the ComplyAdvantage platform, Earthport has achieved its goals of maintaining a high STP rate while effectively mitigating risk. The management team, clients, banking partners and regulators are satisfied by the highly automated yet thorough anti-money laundering processes of the business enabled by ComplyAdvantage’s technology.

Challenges

• Multi-jurisdictional regulatory environment
• High volumes of transactions
• Multiple business models with unique risk profiles

Solution

• Flexible Transaction Monitoring solution
• Easy-to-configure risk scenarios
• Partnership approach to implementation and support

Benefits

• Tailored solution to meet complex regulatory requirements
• Ability to implement a proper risk-based approach
• Reduced false positives
• Improved reporting and audit trail