Money Laundering and Insurance
Caryl Meighan
Since the beginning of the week, stakeholders in the insurance sector have been meeting at the Biltmore to participate in a series of workshops on a range of issues, including anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. Today, compliance officers received specialized training in detecting new trends such as trade-based money laundering and human trafficking. It also focused on source of funds declaration, as well as politically exposed persons. The week-long event was organized by the Insurance Institute of Belize. Its vice president is Caryl Meighan.
Caryl Meighan, V.P., Insurance Institute of Belize
“The Insurance Institute of Belize, we made contact with the compliance aide who is Michelle Martin. We were able to have her come to Belize to do a one-week conference. On Monday, we did the senior managers and the board of directors, we had a session just for them. Tuesday, the conference was focused on frontline staff and agents, alright; they are the first line of defense when it comes to money laundering and terrorist financing. Then on Wednesday we did the internal audit and Thursday, today, is compliance and tomorrow is also compliance.”
Isani Cayetano
“What is the overall objective of this particular conference, in terms of points or things that it would want to achieve?”
Caryl Meighan
“It’s basically educating the different staff members from the different organizations to have a better understanding of AML which is anti-money laundering and terrorist financing and what they are doing is sharing their knowledge and their experience and showing us ways to identify when there are red flags for these types of stuff. So you actually get to learn, whenever you’re facing a client, it gives you, because you’ve learned the techniques you might be able to tell if that client is probably [involved] in money laundering or something like that. But that’s what the session is for, to basically educate, share the knowledge that they have and show new ways and new trends that these launderers are trying to get into the financial institutions.”
The conference concludes on Friday.
