Lumon tackles money laundering typologies with new rule sets deployed in 48 hours

Lumon has provided overseas payments and foreign exchange services to private individuals, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), and larger corporates for over two decades. Alessio Giorgi, Head of Compliance and MLRO at Lumon, says the most significant compliance challenge for global payment firms is managing financial crime risk effectively. Regulations, such as the EU’s 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD), have sought to mitigate the risks inherent to cross-border payments by introducing enhanced due diligence measures for high-risk third countries and increased beneficial ownership transparency.

To remain compliant with these regulations while responding to emerging overseas payments threats, Lumon partnered with ComplyAdvantage for its customer screening and monitoring and transaction monitoring solutions.

A long-standing partnership

Lumon’s relationship with ComplyAdvantage stretches back many years. Initially, the company was looking to replace its legacy customer screening solution, having grown tired of the limited connectivity between the company’s compliance function and its systems. Lumon wanted a solution with API-led connectivity and the ability to manually upload transaction data.

Lumon found many of the products provided by incumbent providers were not suitable for FinTechs. But in ComplyAdvantage, Giorgi says the team “saw a business that knew there was a gap in the market to support FinTech businesses.”

Over the years, the two firms have scaled successfully together. According to Giorgi, ComplyAdvantage’s adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning was key to solidifying the partnership. Automation at speed, accurate data, and the ability to categorize and organize relevant risk data allowed Lumon to generate better insights and apply them throughout its system more efficiently.

Game-changing solutions

ComplyAdvantage’s payment screening functionality in its Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based transaction monitoring solution was a “game-changer” for Giorgi, allowing Lumon to centralize its payment screening and transaction monitoring activities within one team, connected to one system via a single API.

The solution’s connectivity and ComplyAdvantage’s quick response times provide Lumon with peace of mind when managing its risk exposure. The reliability of ComplyAdvantage’s customer success team was also lauded by Lumon. Giorgi explained he’s able to share his concerns, questions, and problems with his dedicated customer manager, knowing a response with proposed solutions will be in his inbox the following morning.

“ComplyAdvantage is supportive, responsive, and has a solution that is at the forefront of RegTech.”

– Alessio Giorgi, Head of Compliance and MLRO at Lumon

Managing pandemic fraud risks

ComplyAdvantage’s transaction monitoring solution has allowed Lumon to uncover new insights into customer activity, enabling the payments firm to detect new or emerging typologies and then build rules to mitigate them.

“ComplyAdvantage’s solutions help us sleep better at night, knowing that we’ve got the right systems and controls in place and that they are effective.”

– Alessio Giorgi, Head of Compliance and MLRO at Lumon

For example, during the early stages of the pandemic, Lumon saw a sudden increase in COVID-related investment fraud. Within 48 hours of identifying this, Lumon developed and deployed new rule sets to combat the threat and prevent more customers from falling victim to scams.

“Deploying the ComplyAdvantage solutions has given us more control over our overall financial crime risk management framework,” said Giorgi. “I would definitely recommend ComplyAdvantage to other businesses, particularly those with ambitions to grow at pace.”