We have covered all the major risk factors identified by international regulators with regard to the consideration and assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risk on a country-by-country basis.
To arrive at our final weighting calculation, we have tried to find a fair and balanced formula that covers all the risk factors. This is an exercise that has evolved over the last few years as factors such as Human Trafficking have become important areas of risk to cover.
Scoring values are determined upon our view of the level of risk posed by any issue within a Risk factor.
The difficulty with regard to determining weightings for each of the risk factors is that our members, both geographically and according to their area of business, will have different requirements when assessing country risk, which is why, in our Membership area we have introduced the Country risk rating tool that will allow you to create your own country ratings dependent upon your business requirements, expertise and risk appetite. Therefore, although we have tried to set weightings and scorings that reflect risk for all users, we would stress that although based on our experience of providing a Country AML ratings table for several years these weightings are subjective and should be used as a guide only.
We have therefore set our weightings to reflect the importance of FATF, the international regulator, with regard to the measure of the effectiveness of Country AML regimes in their financial markets, particularly the FATF AML Deficiency list, which is a list recognized internationally.
Recommendation assessments arising from FATF style Mutual Evaluation exercises are also weighted higher than other risk factors as these provide an assessment of the countermeasures in place, and effectiveness of those countermeasures, against money laundering covering the criminal justice system and law enforcement, the financial system and its regulation, and international co-operation.