Having a fully documented standardised approach to rule development within your organisation is important for several reasons including:

• Ensuring a consistent quality in the rules that are being delivered
• Providing a full audit trail of the development cycle
• Providing further confidence in the TM programme
• Ensuring the process will stand up to audit and regulatory scrutiny, and it will support the training of new key staff such as additional data analysts.

The rule development life cycle presented below provides a high-level overview for taking an agreed rule concept from idea through to creation through to live use on the TM system. This approach advocates the use of live/production data and AML investigators as key elements for the testing process, enabling true suspicions to be identified as part of the testing, proving that the rule will be worthwhile in a live environment.

Depending on the set up of the test and development environments, there may be slight variations in how the test alerts are accessed – some may be provided in e.g. spreadsheet format outside of the case management system while some may be within the case management system.

Regardless of the approach that is suitable for your TM system, common standard rules apply – have the approach documented, ensure appropriate sign off is recorded at the different stages in the process, and ensure the appropriate security standards are being applied regarding access to any live data.

SQA Consulting can provide you with assistance in setting up your TM infrastructure from the implementation of the system, tuning rules right through to setting up the governance structures, processes and procedures and MI, followed by assurance reviews.

Please contact us to find out more about this article.

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