Barclays Bank is standardising on the Temenos anti-money laundering (AML) system as its preferred global sanctions solution for payments and transactions screening. It will be rolled out globally this year, replacing various existing platforms, after winning a benchmarking exercise

The AML solution from Swiss vendor Temenos includes a linguistics module, which Barclays Bank hope will "address the increasing challenges of cultural variations and subtleties" across its global operations. This detection capability, allied to an intelligent false positive reduction methodology, should help drive down total cost of ownership and increase efficiency at the bank.

The impressively titled, Paul Fabara, managing director and global head of operations, regulatory implementation & planning, at Barclays Bank, highlighted the importance of the benchmarking test when commenting upon the installation. "After a rigorous technical assessment of the leading sanctions screening solutions available on the market, the decision to select Temenos for Barclays' global initiative was, in the end, relatively easy [thanks to our evaluation procedure]."

He further added: "The bank's approach to global compliance is unequivocal. We want to lead by example and have found the right product to help us protect that position." All payments and transaction screening will in future be consolidated on the AML platform. The deal marks Temenos' emergence in the AML market after buying French firm Viveo at the turn of the year for £54 million.

"We are delighted to have been selected by Barclays to support its global sanctions screening requirements," says Jean-Michel Hilsenkopf, European regional director, Temenos. "As regulatory challenges for banks increase [post-crunch], we believe our systems can help better protect individuals and institutions against strengthened Sanctioned Entities and Terrorist Financing rules."

According to Andreas Andreades, CEO of Temenos, this is a very exciting time for the company as it enters into the AML market following the successful acquisition of Viveo. "We believe that the AML market offers significant growth potential and our success in penetrating this market will prove an important factor in executing our ambitious growth plans. We have made excellent progress so far integrating the product into our business model and this new signing demonstrates how we are already seizing opportunities in this growth market.

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