Workshop 1 - Compliance for a Competitive Advantage

Workshop Date/Location:
Monday, September 23, 2019
Hotel Grand Pacific
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Almost twenty years into Canada’s money laundering compliance program, one continues to find compliance officers facing struggles to position compliance commitment as an ongoing, integral part of the organization’s operations. Maintaining a competitive edge continues to be a guiding principle for owners, executives, and Board Members when looking at the impact compliance programs have on the businesses products, services, and the ever-important bottom line. When it comes to profit and maintaining market share, compliance officers can find their requirements for effective regulatory controls sometimes ignored or put on hold for a variety of reasons --- some of which actually put the organization at risk for regulatory push back.

Brion Nazarro will explore how he worked with his various executive committees and Boards of Directors to ensure their commitment to compliance across the organization. To confirm compliance practices were in place every time new products and services were developed and implemented. To maintain standards in the way compliance protocols were implemented and reinforced company wide, and to work with marketing teams to ensure that new products and services had the best opportunities to succeed, while ensuring risks are mitigated effectively.

The seminar is being designed to demonstrate best practice models; to encourage input by the audience into the discussions; and to use small group exercises to provide simulated examples of the problems and solutions faced when trying to ensure that competitive edge. A central theme to Brion's approach with this seminar will be to focus attention on how organizations can minimize internal conflict by approaching compliance with a competitive mindset from the onset.

Download the workshop brochure / registration form

Workshop 2 - You Have Been Selected for a FINTRAC Audit: Twenty Years In, Are You Really Prepared?

Workshop Date/Location:
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Hotel Grand Pacific
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

FINTRAC Examinations are becoming increasingly comprehensive and focused since Canada’s AML/CTF legislation came into existence. Compliance requirements emerge, change, and disappear on a regular basis. Reporting entities are required to roll with the changes and ensure that compliance documentation and practices reflect what applies to their individual sector.

FINTRAC’s Director has committed to the release of a new Examination Overview Manual, which will discuss the details involved in a regulatory audit. Those details will provide a checklist against which compliance officers can measure their own compliance programs; thereby providing a way to determine how on- or off-base their program is before the examiner arrives.

FINTRACs standards over the past 25 years have grown from very basic expectations to the detail required given the breadth and depth of the customers, locations, services, and products being offered by a business today. This detail is no longer simple and basic, but has become ever more complex given the multitude of operational variables now used to generate business around the world.

Angelo Coppola will explore FINTRAC's practices and compare them with those models and responses that best support these requirements. He will reference best and poor practices, which participants can discuss in detail in this interactive forum, including a review of case studies in order to explore how certain remedies work, why they work, and how they can best be utilized.

Download the workshop brochure / registration form