Process improvement – international bank’s correspondent banking
Our client is a dual regulated international bank focused on corporate, institutional, retail, small business and correspondent banking along with treasury and trade finance.
Correspondent Banking is a core part of our client’s business, involving a network of relationships, often in jurisdictions with elevated Financial Crime risk. To navigate these complexities, the client implemented a comprehensive framework to manage associated risks. Two years on, they engaged us to review the framework’s effectiveness and identify opportunities to strengthen and/or streamline their approach.
We began the project by holding a workshop with key teams involved in the bank’s correspondent banking activities to understand their expectations for the review. This included in-depth discussions around current challenges, operational pain points, and what ‘good’ would look like for them going forward.
We then carried out a detailed assessment of the bank’s pre-onboarding, onboarding, periodic review, and ongoing monitoring processes. This involved reviewing all relevant documentation and applying regulatory standards, good practice guidance, and our own practical insights into how similar institutions manage correspondent banking risks. A key challenge was navigating discrepancies between UK regulatory expectations and those of certain foreign jurisdictions. We worked closely with the client to refine the level of detail required in areas such as business-wide risk assessments, source of wealth checks and director verification, as well as how they conduct their onsite visits and use risk ratings. Our aim was to help them maintain confidence in the risks being onboarded while removing unnecessary complexity.
To conclude, we sent our clients our initial findings and recommendations, and held a follow-up workshop to discuss them. This session enabled the client to challenge findings, clarify uncertainties, and agree on practical next steps, ensuring the review delivered actionable outcomes aligned with their specific risk appetite and business needs.
Our work provided the firm with a clear, actionable set of efficiency opportunities within parts of the framework, while offering assurance that remaining processes were effective and aligned with regulatory expectations. These improvements have helped the firm avoid unnecessary client offboarding and enhanced their ability to onboard new clients more efficiently, supporting future business growth.
