The Regulatory landscape and SWIFT messages

Cross-border payments have been a central theme in recent regulatory actions where regulators levied record breaking fines against financial institutions that failed to comply with Bank Secrecy Act / anti-money laundering (BSA / AML) regulations. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) is, in some sense, at the heart of these violations because it is one of the major facilitators of global money transfers which have come under increased scrutiny.