FINTECHS WILL NOT HAVE EFFECTIVE AML UNTIL THEIR SPONSOR BANK PARTNERS UPGRADE FINTECH COMPLIANCE DEPARTMENTS REGARDING ADVANCED MONEY LAUNDERING TRADECRAFT

The contest between fintechs and professional money launderers seeking to penetrate and exploit their operations is not a level playing field. The laundrymen know the intrinsic weaknesses of fintech companies are:
(1) Their focus on expanding customer base to achieve eventual profitability.
(2) Their lack of institutional focus on a compliance culture.
(3) The short lifespan of company existence.

The money launderers are then able to achieve relative superiority over the fintech compliance departments, by the employment of advanced, esoteric and obscure money laundering methods and techniques, which the generally inexperienced fintech frontline compliance officers are either not familiar with, and/or do not have the slotted time to sufficiently explore when approving new customers in a rapidly expanding business. Moreover, these new compliance hires have little executive or decisional authority to interdict suspicious transactions should they encounter them, due to the prevailing fintech culture, which views compliance as an impediment to expansion and growth.

Unless and until fintech compliance officers are knowledgeable about advanced money laundering tradecraft, and then given the power to shut down the advanced transactions their new training allows them to uncover, fintech AML will remain ineffective at best, and more often than not, abysmal in ability.