More than 500 professionals from the securities and commodities market, insurance sector, the non-banking financial institutions (NBFI) and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan recently attended 20 awareness sessions on anti-money laundering/counter financing for terrorism (AML/CFT). The SECP held these sessions in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and the Pakistan Stock Exchange office in Lahore in collaboration with United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Financial Market Development (FMD) project.
The sessions were designed to help representatives of financial institutions understand the risk-based approach under the AML/CFT framework and focused on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations applicable to the financial institutions and the FATF monitoring process.
Tariq Bakhtawar, Director, SECP Anti-Money Laundering Department said, "With USAID FMD's technical support, the SECP regulated sectors were briefed on AML/CFT self-assessment. This will result in the laying the necessary foundations for the implementation of a risk based approach."
The SECP's Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Regulations (June 2018) and the supplementary guidelines (issued in September 2018) shift the perspective from one-size-fits-all to the risk-based approach, enabling financial institutions to focus their resources on the high-risk customers.-PR