Prediction market contracts initially gained popularity as a way for people to engage in sports betting, but have evolved to mimic financial derivative products with little institutional oversight.
Best Practices
Posted inBest Practices
Why compliance, not technology, will decide the future of digital sovereign finance
A citizen in the Marshall Islands receives universal basic income directly to a mobile wallet via USDM1, a sovereign digital bond backed by U.S. Treasury bills. The pilot shows that digital public finance’s success hinges less on technology than on compliance.
Posted inBest Practices
Take these three actions to improve trade compliance oversight
Global trade compliance is evolving rapidly, presenting greater complexity and risk. Add geopolitical uncertainty, regional conflicts, protectionism, tariffs, and targeted enforcement, and organizations must reevaluate how they manage cross-border operations to stay competitive and compliant.
Posted inBest Practices
Before the first crypto transaction, finance needs a seat at the compliance table
When an established company considers holding crypto, the compliance questions usually come first. Is the activity permissible? Is the exchange or custodian acceptable? Have the wallets been screened? Are AML and sanctions controls adequate? Those questions can all have satisfactory answers while the transaction still produces an outcome the institution did not intend. The reason […]
Posted inBest Practices
When compliance reporting creates false assurance
Boards are not short of compliance information. Most receive dashboards, heat maps, training figures, investigation data, audit findings, remediation updates, and regulatory summaries. The difficulty is deciding what all that information really says. A report can be accurate, well presented, and still leave directors with too much confidence. That happens when evidence of activity is […]
Posted inSanctions
How ordinary Russian investors got caught in the sanctions net
When sanctions against Russia began multiplying in 2022, the public images were hard to miss: Yachts seized in European ports, villas frozen, bank accounts linked to oligarchs blocked. What I remember from the compliance side looked less visible and much more procedural. It was passports, residence permits, source-of-wealth documents, ownership charts, explanations of old bank […]
Posted inBest Practices
Navigating the supply chain’s new normal
A supply-chain disruption can look simple: A supplier cannot deliver, procurement finds an alternative, engineering qualifies it and production continues. Geopolitical disruption rarely arrives labeled as a compliance problem. It arrives as a sourcing decision, engineering fix or logistics reroute before compliance becomes involved. Recent developments include: Enforcement shows what can be at stake. In […]
Posted inBest Practices
Record-setting AML penalty against UBS was years in the making
FinCEN and several other regulators levied a combined $125 million penalty against UBS Financial Services (UBSFS), a broker-dealer and futures commission merchant, due to a series of long-standing compliance failures. The total penalty was a joint effort of federal regulators, including FINRA ($20 million), the Securities and Exchange Commission ($20 million), and the Commodity Futures Trading […]
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Beyond breaching privacy: The compliance risks of workplace surveillance
When organizations implement workplace surveillance tools, the conversation often begins with privacy. Questions about employee consent, data collection, retention periods, and legal compliance are essential. But as workplace monitoring technologies become more sophisticated, focusing exclusively on privacy risks often overlooks a much larger challenge.
Posted inBest Practices
The hidden cost of compliance leadership
There is a cost attached to senior compliance roles that does not appear in job descriptions, is rarely discussed in appraisals, and is absent from careers talks given to people entering the profession.
