New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs Chooses MetricStream to Manage Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism

SYDNEY, Nov. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs has selected MetricStream to provide a comprehensive and integrated solution for regulatory management and compliance monitoring. Built on a scalable GRC platform, the solution will offer Internal Affairs a centralized point of reference for managing, assessing, and monitoring compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act) across financial institutions and casinos (reporting entities).

The AML/CFT Act , which came into effect on June 30, 2013, requires Internal Affairs, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and the Financial Markets Authority to monitor New Zealand's financial institutions and casinos to both deter and detect money laundering and terrorism financing. The Act also requires all reporting entities to conduct risk assessments of money laundering and terrorism financing in their business, implement a comprehensive AML/ CFT program, establish customer due diligence processes, and enable suspicious transaction reporting, auditing, and annual reporting systems and processes. Internal Affairs has a responsibility to ensure that each of these requirements is being adhered to by all of the reporting entities in its sector.

These reporting entities include casinos, non-deposit lenders, money changers, money remitters, payroll remitters, debt collectors, financial leasers, safe deposit box vaults, non-bank credit card providers, stored value card providers and cash transporters, trust and company service providers, and any other reporting entities outside the Reserve Bank or Financial Markets Authority's supervision.

"We have to regulate hundreds, in future potentially thousands, of reporting entities, and thus were looking for a single, integrated solution that could offer us a real-time view of compliance activities across all reporting entities, help us identify gaps, as well as help to implement proactive remediation measures," said Kate Reid, Manager Financial Integrity at Internal Affairs. "We chose MetricStream because of the sophistication of their solution, and the ability to automatically track and consolidate compliance and reporting data across a vast range of financial institutions and casinos. The flexibility and scalability of the solution are critical factors which will enable us to quickly adapt to changes in legislation, business processes, and reporting entities."

The MetricStream solution will provide a common Web portal for all reporting entities to submit annual reports and other information to the department. Internal Affairs will use the MetricStream solution to gain visibility into the compliance efforts of these entities, to quickly identify non-compliance issues or areas of concern, and to initiate compliance reviews, investigations and follow-up activities. The solution will also be used to maintain and provide complete, accurate, and timely AML/CFT information to the government. Built-in tools to streamline and automate compliance management workflows will help Internal Affairs perform its supervisory duties in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

"We look forward to helping the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs in their efforts to combat money laundering and terrorism financing," said Shankar Bhaskaran, VP & GM International Business Operations at MetricStream. He continued, "MetricStream solutions are being deployed by federal agencies and regulatory authorities in countries around the world as they seek to strengthen their oversight of risk and compliance activities. In particular, we are seeing significant interest in MetricStream's integrated GRC platform and solutions from businesses and governments in Australia and New Zealand as they look to build world-class GRC programs."

About MetricStream

MetricStream is a market leader in enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management Solutions for global corporations. MetricStream solutions are used by leading corporations such as UBS, Barclaycard US, P&G, Constellation Energy, Pfizer, Philips, United Technologies Corporation, SanDisk, Cummins, and Autogrill in diverse industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Energy and Utilities, Food, Retail, CPG, Government, Hi-tech and Manufacturing to manage their risk management programs, quality processes, regulatory and industry-mandated compliance and corporate governance initiatives, as well as several million compliance professionals worldwide via the www.ComplianceOnline.com portal. MetricStream is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and has its ANZ offices in Sydney and can be reached at www.metricstream.com.

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