The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) required its supervised financial institutions to find a balance between their anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations and the promotion of financial inclusion inthe country, which an analyst described as a “sensible approach.”The policy-setting Monetary Board has approved the latest amendments to BSP’s Anti-MoneyLaundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations. London-based data and business research provider IHS Markit said amendments to the BSP’s AML regulations are extremely pragmatic, taking a risk-based approach to AML regulations. The BSP amendments are an important enabling step to improve financial inclusion for low income households, he added. “This is part of the BSP’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the financial system’s safeguards against money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) balanced against the objective of also promoting financial inclusion of the unbanked,” it highlighted. The primary considerations in amending the rules are the latest Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, which took effect on January 7 2017; lessons learned from recent ML/TF cases; and the latest Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations and Guidance Papers on applying a risk-based approach to AML/CFT standards and striking a balance between financial integrity and financial inclusion.

Source: Manila Times March 17, 2017 17:15 UTC