Fintelekt, an India-based provider of professional training and certification for the financial sector, organized the 2nd Annual Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Summit on April 27th, 2016 at Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo.
The keynote address was delivered by H Amarathunga, Director, Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Sri Lanka. In view of several resource constraints and asymmetric information available with financial institutions, he strongly advocated the risk based approach for profiling customers and stressed upon the imperatives in order to move to stronger AML and CFT systems in Sri Lanka.
The list of eminent speakers during the day included Bhanu Wijayaratne, Chief Compliance Officer, Hatton National Bank & President of Association of Compliance Officers of Banks Sri Lanka (ACOB); Sean Norris, Head of APAC, Accuity; N Ashok, Vice President – FCSU Trade AML – Advisory GSSCs, Scope International; Debmalya Maitra, Chief – Audit, Risk & Compliance, Aegon Life Insurance, India; and Priyanka Kadam, Compliance Director – India, First Data.
A panel discussion on “Taking AML Programs to the Next Level” was moderated by Bhanu Wijayaratne and insights were shared by Chaya Gunaratna, Compliance Officer, Union Bank of Colombo; Inam Cassim, Head of Compliance – Sri Lanka, Standard Chartered Bank; and Premasiri Rathnayake, Assistant General Manager – Risk, Cargills Bank.
The summit saw excellent participation from senior compliance officers at banks, financial institutions and insurance companies within Sri Lanka.