While an entity can undertake a detailed evaluation of its control design and control operating effectiveness through a formal audit, a periodical check to verify if the controls are functioning as intended, is advisable. Such assessments are referred to as health checks. Generally, there will be no formal report issued in case of health check. While an audit is employed to identify areas of weakness and to obtain recommendations for improvement, a health check is employed to verify certain outcome of a process and to ensure its accuracy or completeness.
For example, an entity can employ a health check for some of the following aspects of the AML/CFT procedures.
Rectification of errors identified are corrected immediately as part of the business-as-usual process. In fact, the findings and rectification activities can be shared with the audit team to highlight the entity’s increased level of process monitoring.
Health checks can also be crucial in the identification of risks within a specific process. Say, if there are systematic errors on the part of the entity in identifying PEP status of its clients, then there should be a serious control lapse in its Customer Due Diligence (CDD) process.
We at Adventant, through our functional and industrial expertise offer you our health check services to ensure that your entity is always audit ready. As health check is performed on a more frequent basis than an audit, your AML/CFT process gets fine-tuned on a continuous basis and your organizational culture gets more attuned towards AML compliance. Our health check outcome provides the Compliance Officers to be on top of their organization’s AML/CFT framework, its robust implementation and effective operation.
