EastNets launches en.SafeWatch FATCA to enable foreign financial institutions to comply with new US tax evasion laws

EastNets launches en.SafeWatch FATCA to enable foreign financial institutions to comply with new US tax evasion laws 

en.SafeWatch FATCA powered by proven technology used in EastNets’ suite of anti-money laundering solution

March 19, 2013

EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions, has announced the recent launch of EastNets en.SafeWatch FATCA, a new specialised solution that enables foreign financial institutions (FFI) to comply with the US Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) using the proven technology used in EastNets’ suite of anti-money laundering solutions. Offered as a Standalone Installation or as an add-on Feature Pack to the normal en.SafeWatch Profiling solution by EastNets, the en.SafeWatch FATCA is also being developed to meet other countries’ taxation laws in the future aside from supporting tax evasion regulations in the US.

en.SafeWatch FATCA assists FFIs by gathering required information on their customer base and in the process discover any missing information about customers. It also provides the necessary scenarios to categorize and segment customer details, in effect identifying their eligibility to the FATCA. en.SafeWatch FATCA also logs and keeps track of changes on customer data meeting the US indicia, automatically keeping FFIs alerted for indicia changes. The reporting capabilities of en.SafeWatch FATCA is powered by EastNets’ flexible reporting engine, providing customers with a wealth of information as well as dedicated automated publishing.

Hazem Mulhim, CEO EastNets, said: “The en.SafeWatch FATCA has been developed to provide a practical and easy-to-use solution for financial institutions to comply with the US Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act. The US and other governments are now actively bolstering and enforcing tax evasion laws to prevent the proliferation of such criminal activities. This has created new challenges for financial institutions as they deal with additional requirements that are affecting the currently implemented policy and procedure as well as the technical and the informational technology platform enhancements. In this regard, en.SafeWatch FATCA provides a unified solution to address the new challenges without burdening financial institutions with substantial upfront technology investments. Moreover, en.SafeWatch FATCA has been optimised for ease-of-use as it does not require advanced IT expertise to be configured.”

Fully integrated with EastNets’ market-leading watchlist filtering solution used today by over 500 clients in 80 countries, en.SafeWatch Profiling provides a robust, effective and easy-to-use transaction and customer monitoring solution that is configurable and flexible to adapt to new risks and regulations. The solution includes advanced customer and account profiling, risk score management and peer group analysis, know your customer (KYC) controls, case management and regulatory reporting.

The US Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was signed in March 2010 with an effective date of January 1, 2013, is part of expanding efforts by the US Government to combat tax evasion. Accordingly, FATCA has created significant implications for FFIs banking US persons or holding US assets in any form as FFIs are now required to take several actions in compliance with the new tax evasion law.