Jan 29, 2020
“For a long time, these were fields that were seen as kind of ancillary—compliance issues, have-to-dos and cost centers,” Juan C. Zarate says of anti-money laundering, fraud and cybersecurity. “Today, management of financial crime risk is now a fundamental part of banking.”
On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Zarate—a former senior counter-terrorist financing official in the George W. Bush administration currently affiliated with the Financial Integrity Network, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Harvard Law School and NBC News — discusses the central and convergent role that financial crimes enforcement plays in banking today. Among other topics, Zarate addresses:
- The capacity of cyber criminals to circumvent defenses, manipulate systems and even change fundamental data
- The “arms race” in financial crimes to stop threats from nation-states like Iran and North Korea
- The role of technologies like AI and machine learning in “deepening the moat” around banks, as well as the nearness of next-generation technologies like quantum encryption
- The technical skills banks need access to in today’s environment, including data science and engineers