| _ PRESS RELEASE: 19 December 2001
"Now, banks and others can know their customer, not just the customer's money"
Risk Values Limited, a UK company, has announced a quantum leap in know-your-customer procedures for financial services businesses.
RV1™ is a software tool that assesses the relationship between a customer - or prospective customer - and a bank, insurance company or other financial institution.
By the simple application of a Risk Value, RV1™ will provide a guide as to whether someone intends to use the relationship for a financial or economic crime such as fraud, money laundering or the financing of terrorism.
RV1™ has been developed as a result of a collaboration between two formerly diverse disciplines: the study of personality analysis and the need to detect and prevent money laundering, financing of terrorism and other financial crime.
Announcing the product, Risk Values Limited's Nigel Morris-Cotterill said "The urgent need for a product such as RV1™ arose out of the reaction of governments and financial services businesses to the events of 11 September 2001. We saw considerable prejudice growing against those with Muslim or Arab sounding names and those originating from Muslim countries. Quite simply, that was racist and was not acceptable.
"So, I wondered if there was a way of assessing risk without any reference to five criteria: name, religion, racial or country of origin and (for different reasons) transaction history. I contacted Patrick Lalonde-Dade who I knew had been involved in relevant research some ten years ago and asked for ideas.
Within a month, Pat and Les Higgins, a mathematician, had a working model that will assess both existing and prospective customers and ascribe, on an individual basis, a Risk Value."
The financial institution applies to each customer the level of account monitoring it considers appropriate given the risk value.
"RV1™ is not culturally dependent and works across entire customer groups. It is not necessary to have different versions of the program for different business areas," said Lalonde-Dade.
RV1™ is language dependent and at launch RV1™ will apply in English only. Other language versions will follow.
RV1™ works straight out of the box: there is no complex data input and no need to build up historical transaction data to analyse the financial behaviour of customers, which is a significant weakness of existing "anti-money laundering" software.
Risk Values Limited has taken a very different route to such software in terms of pricing, too: "So called anti-money laundering software can cost tens of millions of dollars per installation and, when it has been installed, it can take three to five years of data input before it is capable of delivering meaningful results. The cost of such an installation is beyond the means of the vast majority of those who are required to have in place proper know your customer procedures. RV1™ costs USD1000 per branch per annum. We have set the price at that level so that small financial services businesses and financial services businesses in the developing world can afford it," said Morris-Cotterill.
"Know your customer, not just your customer's money" ™
Notes to editors
1. The Risk Values website is at www.riskvalues.com (this site)
2. The Risk Values project was formulated by Nigel Morris-Cotterill who advises financial services businesses around the world on the detection and prevention of money laundering and the recovery of proceeds of financial crime. He is senior consultant with UK based counter-money laundering consultancy Silkscreen Limited (www.countermoneylaundering.com). Nigel is also editor of World Money Laundering Report (www.vortexcentrum.com) and MD of clicktolearnmore.com, the leading provider of content for counter-money laundering training by e-learning.
3. The analysis was researched and developed by Pat Lalonde-Dade and Les Higgins who have conducted relevant research and analysis for marketing led projects for over ten years.
4. Risk Values Limited is a new joint venture company formed to develop and market the Risk Values project.
5. RV1™ uses a custom-designed algorithm to analyse customer responses and create a Risk Value.
6. RV1™ can also be used by non-financial services businesses to asses the Risk Value a potential customer or supplier.
7. RV1™ will ship on 15th January 2001. Several major financial institutions expressed considerable interest in RV1™ even during its formative stages of development.
8. RV1™ will be available in two versions: a stand alone version which requires no installation and an open-end version enabling customers to integrate RV1™ within their existing data-capture and reporting systems.
9. Contact:
Press:
Nigel Morris-Cotterill, Risk Values Limited, P O Box 1882, Brentwood, Essex CM15 0GA, England
Tel: +44 701 0701 129 e-mail: nigelmc@riskvalues.com
Product Enquiries:
Risk Values Limited, P O Box 1882, Brentwood, Essex, CM15 0GA, England
Tel: +44 (0) 709 233 2269 e-mail: enquiries@riskvalues.com
www.riskvalues.com
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