Monex achieves global growth with enhanced customer screening and transaction monitoring

Monex is a global e-money institution that specializes in commercial foreign exchange (FX) services. Headquartered in Mexico, the Monex group of companies has experienced significant growth in recent years, serving a wide range of customers from financial institutions (FIs), large corporates, and funds to money service businesses (MSBs), crypto clients, and high-net-worth individuals. As the company expanded into new countries and its regulatory requirements evolved, Monex needed a compliance solution to scale and iterate alongside its growing needs.

Overcoming regulatory and operational challenges

For global FX firms, one of the primary challenges is keeping up with ever-changing regulatory requirements across different jurisdictions. Ensuring the client experience isn’t negatively impacted in the process adds a further layer of complexity.

Before partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Monex’s payment screening process was not efficient. The company had an over-reliance on manual efforts and used generic rule sets that failed to address the specific needs of its diverse client base. This lack of customization and automation resulted in operational inefficiencies, leading to delayed transactions and an increased risk of overlooking potential matches that could indicate fraudulent or suspicious activities. 

We were using monitoring rules that were not tailored to our client base. This meant the process felt like a tick box exercise, rarely producing ‘real’ alerts that indicated suspicious behavior.

Dean Smith, Financial Crime Manager & DMLRO at Monex Europe

As the company expanded into new territories and diversified its product offerings, Monex needed a solution that could scale and continuously update without additional development work. 

Enabling a transition to automation

Monex decided to partner with ComplyAdvantage for customer screening and transaction monitoring due to the seamless initial integration that ComplyAdvantage offered. Having a single provider for both services meant the company benefited from a unified point of contact at ComplyAdvantage, accelerating the process of iterating and updating operational processes in line with the evolution of Monex’s products and offerings.

As our company has expanded into new countries and regulatory requirements have changed, ComplyAdvantage has scaled its support to meet our growing needs.

Rheann Randall, Projects Manager, Compliance at Monex Europe

Since implementation, Monex has transformed its transaction monitoring and customer screening approach. Where the process once involved extensive manual effort, stretching over undefined periods, ComplyAdvantage enabled a transition to automation that allowed Monex to get up and running with its new solutions within two weeks. The ability to quickly adapt and implement necessary transaction monitoring rules means Monex can now manage its compliance obligations and mitigate financial crime risk more effectively than ever. 

Enhanced operational workflows

Monex’s integration of ComplyAdvantage’s customer screening and transaction monitoring solutions has transformed its approach to compliance, thanks to the flexibility to tailor rules and thresholds. This customization has led to a noteworthy decline in the rate of false positives encountered by the compliance team – a pivotal improvement highlighted by Projects Manager, Compliance Rheann Randall. 

Monex attributes this success to several key factors, including the precise customization of screening lists to better meet jurisdictional regulatory expectations and the capability to refine adverse media screenings, focusing on particular categories of relevance. The solutions also demonstrate an “enhanced proficiency in recognizing Chinese names,” a feature that helps increase screening accuracy. 

Randall also highlighted the system’s efficiency in streamlining alert management. She emphasized the platform’s comprehensive design, consolidating pertinent data for payment and client activities to facilitate a faster response to alerts.

The transaction monitoring platform contains all the necessary information related to the payment and client activity needed for an analyst to manage an alert. This has helped reduce the time taken to resolve alerts.

Rheann Randall, Projects Manager, Compliance at Monex Europe

Monex’s Financial Crime Manager & DMLRO, Dean Smith, also noted that the partnership had significantly improved their handling of alert escalations. Where responses to critical issues might have previously followed a less structured path, ComplyAdvantage’s solutions provided a framework that streamlined these processes, “ensuring urgent issues were addressed and resolved with increased efficiency and effectiveness.” 

A strategic partnership

Monex’s extended partnership with ComplyAdvantage has been vital to its growth and success. The tailored support from ComplyAdvantage’s technical and customer success teams and the platform’s ability to segregate data and workflows for different jurisdictions have played a crucial role in Monex’s expansion into new markets and compliance with diverse regulations. 

ComplyAdvantage has played a significant role in supporting Monex’s expansion into countries such as Canada, Luxembourg, Spain, and Singapore. Each jurisdiction has different screening and monitoring needs and requirements, which we have been able to quickly meet thanks to the customizability of ComplyAdvantage.

Dean Smith, Financial Crime Manager & DMLRO at Monex Europe

When asked why Monex has chosen to stay partnered with ComplyAdvantage since 2018, Smith pointed to the platform’s reliability and the opportunity for continuous development. With “virtually zero downtime,” the platform has supported Monex’s operations seamlessly, allowing it to expand confidently into new markets, including ventures such as securing an e-money license in the UK. This expansion required a sophisticated transaction monitoring system capable of adapting to new types of payments and managing higher volumes without the need for increased staffing, “something our previous vendors wouldn’t have been able to do.”