Ken Joseph of the New York office of Duff & Phelps/credit: Larry Lettera/Camera 1.

A new compliance survey of financial executives reveals that while most financial firms rated themselves as being effective at anti-money laundering, some 30% rated at least one of their anti-money laundering components as being either “not at all effective” or only “somewhat effective.”

The survey, “Global Regulatory Outlook 2019: Are We There Yet?,” answers its title's own question—we're only part way there.

The survey was released this week by compliance consultant Duff & Phelps, who polled financial executives online in March and April. Over 180 respondents from a range of countries and financial service sectors participated, including asset/wealth managers, private equity hedge funds and banks among the top three groups.

The survey also highlighted other industry concerns for general counsel, chief compliance officers and risk managers. They included data protection and privacy, whistleblower programs, and big data and technology issues in general. But the money laundering worries stood out.

“Despite the very real progress that has been made, there is also a growing sense of regulatory fatigue—that we are unable to decisively turn the tide in the battle against financial crime, that there is never enough transparency,” wrote London-based Julian Korek, vice chairman of Duff & Phelps, in the report's preface.

The report said, “It is a war we are nowhere close to winning—or even fighting to a draw, as evidenced by a steady stream of high-profile news stories.” In less than a year major scandals have been exposed at Denmark's Danske Bank, Sweden's Swedbank, the U.K.'s Standard Chartered bank, and Russia's Troika Dialogue, which ran the so-called Troika Laundromat for shell companies.

All that despite the U.S. financial industry spending an estimated $25 billion on compliance efforts, while regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of financial institutions.

Attorney Ken Joseph, managing director and head of the disputes practice in Duff & Phelps' New York office, said the survey shows anti-money laundering is the top area of concern for general counsel, chief compliance officers and risk managers at financial institutions.

Joseph, who spent 21 years in enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said general counsel, compliance officers and risk managers need to “play a significant role” in risk assessment at each entity. He said they should align their internal priorities with regulatory priorities and tailor each program to the business.

“They're not dragging their feet,” he said. “You'll find there may be a myriad of systems they have to collect information from, and the coding of data may not be consistent across an entity. The sheer volume of information to be processed, especially across jurisdictions, is quite daunting. The survey reflects there is room to grow there.”

One British expert agreed. Livia Benisty, head of financial crime in London for the regulatory technology firm ComplyAdvantage, said global financial crime amounts to $3 trillion a year, “and we are catching and stopping only 1% of that.”

She said a key part of the money laundering problem is the “incredibly complicated banking network with payments coming in, and going out, all over the world.”

Benisty said a second issue is that some of the larger scandals involved frontline staff being complicit in the schemes. “That's the hardest one to deal with,” she said, “because your business staff is your first line of defense. And if they are complicit in it, then there is an additional layer of problems.”

Still Benisty thinks there is hope to staunch the flow of illicit cash. She said most money laundering regulations didn't kick in until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., and it took a few years to gear up. Other countries didn't join in until the U.S. began expanding its prosecutions globally, she said, so many countries are still catching up.

“I see it getting better,” Benisty said. “Technology will make a huge difference as we exponentially increase the capacity of our compliance tools to see things that human beings can't, to see the patterns and the matrixes.”

On the other hand, she warned, “We need to make sure that technology innovations to move money around the world do not outpace our efforts” to track it.