More than 40 companies in the financial technology ecosystem signed a “voluntary agreement” this Monday in which they commit to using the list of the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as part of strengthening their internal controls regarding Prevention of Money Laundering (PLD) and Terrorist Financing (TF).
The companies, belonging to the FinTech Mexico association, pointed out that this is a “big step” to strengthen the Mexican financial system and go beyond current regulatory obligations, which require validating the blacklists of clients and companies provided by the Tax Administration Service (SAT).
“I believe that we have the obligation to take one more step and OFAC is the internationally recognized element to validate this list of characters that require special attention,” explained the director of FinTech Mexico, Claudia Núñez during the appearance in Mexico City.
Núñez pointed out that this agreement generates greater trust in the user, the authorities and the rest of the financial institutions, which causes an improvement in the relationship of these elements with the Mexican banking system.
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On the other hand, they highlighted the importance of going one step ahead of the established measures: “Regulation is something very fixed and the problem is that money laundering and terrorist financing is advancing so quickly that you need, as a company, to be able to make that update to get to where you need to be.”
The coordinator of the PLD committee of FinTech Mexico, Bernardo Mendoza Ruenes, highlighted that this is an “initial step in a much more robust program” and that it will improve the credit system internationally, even if it involves carrying out a “sweep” of clients in the entities.
The OFAC list, officially called the Specially Designated Nationals list, includes people, entities and countries sanctioned by the United States government due to their alleged participation in activities such as drug trafficking, terrorism or money laundering.
With information from EFE.
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