Dissecting the Risk Assessment: Structure, Detail and Functionality

Tuesday, February 7, 2023
1:00 - 2:30 PM EST

The risk assessment has become a key element in the overall design and application of a reporting entity’s compliance management approach. FINTRAC has provided guidance on design and content at the sector-specific level as well as through generic Guidance documentation. The interpretation of this guidance by reporting entities has resulted in a wide array of models fashioned to represent the risk factors and mitigating responses impacting on each business’ services, products, geographies, delivery systems, clients/customers, and other associated elements.

Assessments and scheduled effectiveness reviews of those models have resulted in mixed responses to their efficacy for controlling and managing the risks for money laundering and terrorist financing.

While no one model is necessarily better than the next at first glance, the overall applicability and usefulness can readily differ when you begin to dissect the models into their capacities to:

• identify the entity’s risk factors;
• assign the factors’ risk level;
• provide the findings on which that risk level was chosen;
• put in place the necessary mitigation measures to control the risk;
• reassess the risk level once the mitigation measures are in place; and
• determine if the business can live with that risk.

Is the organization getting the best outcome from its standards?

CAMLI’s first online seminar of 2023 will look at FINTRAC’s expectations for Risk Assessment Manuals across the designated reporting sectors. The presenters will discuss the structure, detail, and functionality one would expect to see in both the narrative and application of an entity’s risk model. Perceived weaknesses will be identified and limitations that could result in an examination/review deficiency discussed.

View the webcast seminar brochure