St James’s Place taps AML regtech Napier for customer screening solution

The UK’s largest wealth manager, St James’s Place (SJP), has partnered with anti-money laundering (AML) regtech Napier to upgrade its financial crime defences.

Napier offers an AI-led platform for AML and trade compliance which SJP will utilise for large-scale customer screening, “strengthening its financial crime compliance function”.

The company says its solution will provide SJP with the ability to continuously screen entities against global watch lists of sanctions, politically exposed persons and adverse media, as well as any internal whitelists and blacklists, across the entire organisation.

SJP group money laundering reporting officer, Chris Thomas, says the Napier system has enabled SJP to deal with the introduction of sanctions against Russia “very effectively”.

“The fact that we are now able to undertake daily screening means that management of the operational workflow is far more efficient,” Thomas adds. “The system offers greater flexibility than the previous one, and there are lots of opportunities for further automation of the review and decisioning process.”

Napier CEO and founder Julian Dixon adds: “The regulatory landscape moves at a rate of knots, and organisations must be agile, continuously adapting their approaches to financial crime compliance.”