Our client is a global bank operating in Australia and therefore it is required under Australian law to comply with the "Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006" (AML/CTF Act). The AML/CTF Act requires that all financial institutions operating in Australia to have procedures in place to detect suspicious or illegal financial transactions.

Our client has chosen to use the leading compliance solution Transwatch by Thomson Reuters to help them to comply with the AML/CTF Act.

Challenge No. 1

Our client has a wide range of different types of transactions that need to be monitored for suspicious activities. Adding to this challenge is the different types of transactions stored in a diverse range of computer systems and data formats. Such a challenge is not unusual in a big financial institution where there is a mix of different types of computer systems all serving the needs of the different business units. Our client's financial transactions need to be extracted from the different computer systems and then converted into a single, unified data format which can be read by the Thomson Reuters Transwatch system.

Approach taken to overcome Challenge No. 1

To overcome the huge task of converting the transactions extracted from different computer systems into a single, unified data format, Kiong Software designed and implemented a technical solution that acts as an "adaptor" which converts the extracted transactions into a data format that can be read by the Thomson Reuters Transwatch system. This approach is similar to a traveller using a universal power adaptor plug to connect his/her electrical appliances to different types of power sockets. The main advantage of this simple and yet ingenious approach is that it leaves the proven and complex components unchanged and use a smaller and more flexible component to connect the two complex components together. This approach also helps our client avoid the potentially expensive exercise of changing the proven and complex components in order to make them fit each other.

The diagram above shows the high level view of the "adaptor" approach to our challenge. With the "adaptor" approach, Kiong Software is able to work with different teams simultaneously and independently and is thus able to shorten the implementation time significantly.

Challenge No. 2

To identify suspicious financial transactions effectively, it is necessary for our client to perform due diligence on the customers that they are dealing with. This process is commonly known in the banking industry as "Know Your Customer" (KYC). In the KYC process, our client performs due diligence on the customers it deals with and collects the necessary data on its customers in order to assess the financial risks associated with the customers. Our client requires a computerized solution to manage the KYC data so that the information can be integrated with the Thomson Reuters Transwatch system to identify suspicious transactions and this computerized solution must also be implemented within its project schedule.

Approach taken to overcome Challenge No. 2.

Kiong Software steps up to this challenge and proposed to build a robust, commercial-grade and yet cost-effective solution that will meet all our client's requirements. We are confident that we can deliver such a solution because of our solid experience in software development, database design and IT solution integration. After evaluating all our client's requirements, we chose the best components which will enable us to deliver the solution. We chose to build the front-end Graphical User Interface (GUI) on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). The backend business logic engine is a Java web application built on the popular Spring Framework. MySQL database is used as the RDBMS storage to store the persistent data. In addition, we incorporated redundancy features in our solution to prevent a single point of failure from causing unplanned downtime to our solution.

Challenge No. 3

Due to the number of different computer systems and the different business units involved in this project, it posed a significant challenge to us to not only get the cooperation of all the different teams within our client's organization but also that of the vendors' so that all parties will work in synergy.

Approach taken to overcome Challenge No. 3.

Kiong Software has always been committed to total customer satisfaction -- not just satisfaction in our solution but also satisfaction in how we conduct ourselves and the ways we deliver our solution. We have the technical expertise to implement professional and ingenious IT solution and we have the "soft skills" to work in harmony and in synergy with our clients.