Norkom Software will strengthen Swedbank’s defences against money laundering

Leading Northern European bank, Swedbank, is to strengthen its defences against financial crime and enhance its compliance with anti-money laundering regulation by choosing market-leading software from Norkom Technologies.

The bank will be able to use Norkom’s software across its group operations in all the markets where the bank is present to increase its protection against financial crime and to ensure effective compliance with national and international regulations including the 3rd EU Money Laundering Directive.

The software will monitor Swedbank’s transactions across all customers and accounts to detect, investigate, manage and report suspected money laundering attempts.

In addition to improving detection of suspicious activity using sophisticated analytics, the software’s step by step investigation workflows and comprehensive alert and case management capabilities will deliver greater efficiency to the investigation process, significantly reducing costs and improving productivity.

Commenting on the agreement, Katarina Bromé, head of operational risk and compliance at Swedbank said: "We have chosen to implement Norkom as an integral part of Swedbank’s strategy to combat money laundering and ensuring long-term regulatory compliance. The Norkom solution will be a key ingredient to accurately detect and efficiently investigate money laundering activities.

“Norkom has a strong international track record, a well-proven AML solution combined with competent and highly committed people. The flexibility of the solution to be extended into other areas of financial crime is also an important factor for Swedbank," she added.

Norkom’s chief commercial officer, Liam Griffin, commented: “As well as meeting the bank’s current anti-money laundering requirements, in the future Swedbank will be able to benefit from the flexibility of our technology platform and its ability to address other types of financial crime across the enterprise. This provides Swedbank with the security of knowing that it can cost effectively evolve its use of the Norkom platform as its business needs change and grow.”

The contract with Swedbank builds on Norkom Technologies’ expanding blue chip client base, which includes leading financial services organizations such as HSBC, Credit Agricole, DnB NOR, Fortis, Rabobank, Standard Chartered Bank, Washington Mutual and Western Union.

Norkom’s award-winning software has been described as ‘outclassing its competitors’ by the analyst group, Celent, and as an ‘effective enterprise wide financial crime management solution’ by Gartner. Norkom was also recognized as ‘The Best Technology Solution’ in Complinet’s 2007 compliance awards, the number one for AML and fraud in the OpRisk & Compliance magazine’s software rankings survey and ‘Best AML Product’ in the Banking Technology Awards.