Dr Ronald F Pol | SpeakerHub

Personal Details

Bio

With a background in law and economics and a PhD in policy effectiveness and money laundering, Dr Pol specializes in policy and business outcomes. Beyond day-to-day concern with activity, process, and output targets, outcomes are the results that matter.

Troubled by evidence that the ‘war’ on money laundering may be the least effective anti-crime measure anywhere, ever (and quoted for it in US Senate testimony, Politico and elsewhere), Pol sought out the best legal and policy thinkers to help test root causes and new concepts. The field of research is immense, and complicated, but at its core, simple, and the problem is clear. Despite three decades of prodigious effort and cost, and the exponential growth of a vast anti-money laundering industrial complex, the current prescription is shockingly ineffective in disrupting criminal finances. Serious profit-motivated crime continues to flourish and expand.

Fusing anti-money laundering practice with policy effectiveness and outcomes science, a surprisingly rare combination, years of research converged on troubling new insights, opportunities and solutions.

Dr Pol's money laundering expertise is rare. Other disciplines (law, accounting, etc) are grounded in university-level qualifications, supplemented with private sector skills-based courses. Anti-money laundering is the opposite, dominated by a few global private sector education providers, offering short-course diplomas. They provide a good grounding in the detail how to operate in the current system, ticking all the boxes, but inculcated in the dominant narrative offer little capacity to test core foundations and assumptions underpinning the system. Nor innovative insights, opportunities and solutions, rigorously evidence-based.

Current position (1)

Principal

AMLassurance.com

Degrees (3)

PhD (Political Science, policy effectiveness, money laundering)

Griffith University

2014 to 2017

LLB (Hons)

Auckland University

1984 to 1988

BCom (Econ)

Auckland University

1984 to 1988

Presentations

Presentations (9)

Assessing outcomes or ticking boxes?

With surprisingly little discussion at the intersection of anti-money laundering practice and policy effectiveness and outcomes science, this thought-provoking presentation combines elements of these disciplines and recent evaluations to outline the first independent assessment of FATF's anti-money laundering 'effectiveness' methodology, and what it means for your business, and country.

Uncomfortable truths? ML=BS and AML= BS squared

For decades, researchers have exposed a paucity of meaningful links between AML/CFT controls and crime and terrorism prevention, yet the dominant narrative persists, largely unchecked, unquestioned, seemingly unquestionable. This provocative, evidence-based presentation examines components of the dominant narrative in the context of scholarship on “bullshit”, and why the industry's unchanged 'compliance with standards based on rules' mantra and wilful (or wishful) blindness for effectiveness, matters for your business.

AML/CFT ratings: Uncovering evidence hidden in plain sight

With a dearth of scholarship at the intersection of money laundering and policy effectiveness science, this presentation uniquely combines elements of these disciplines and examines anti-money laundering effectiveness from a different viewpoint. Rather than seeking to measure money laundering or estimate the proportion of criminal proceeds successfully intercepted, new insights drawn directly from the anti-money laundering industry’s own “main” dataset reveals new insights, with information-rich visualisations, cross-country comparisons and rankings. These new findings raise disturbing questions. For instance, does the persistent (and ongoing) failure to transform available data into information for knowledge and insight suggest that the risk has been realised that impressionistic judgments or politicised interests drive the policy agenda at least as much as objective evidence or substantive economic and social goals?

“Money laundering is BS”, so why should we care?

With an ever-increasing number and breadth of AML/CFT obligations, firms are constantly boosting compliance teams and resources, so this presentation is as perennially timely as it promises to be thought-provoking, as Ron shares some inconvenient truths about the AML industry. He explains why ML is BS, and AML more so, and why it doesn’t much matter what the law says about AML obligations. When you peel away to what ML is really about, it’s just plain good business to think differently.

Discussion includes (a) Why AML is a misnomer that masks its own capacity to be effective; (b) What AML is really about, and why it’s good for your business; (c) Why expensive software systems and training programs teaching the arcane intricacies of an acronym-addled industry might be inadvertently reducing the effectiveness of your AML/CFT program, ironically increasing risk.

Beyond AML for lawyers, accountants & realtors: What are we not looking for?

Offering practitioners a strategic view and a new perspective about anti-money laundering compliance. A global and regional perspective, supplemented with embargoed empirical research, identifies how professionals are used to launder criminal proceeds, beyond the assumptions and theory of 'standards'. Identify serious gaps, in practice, that most firms inadvertently miss with AML/CFT systems linked to compliance rules. Looking through the big lens of the telescope inadvertently restricts firms' perspective to the minutiae of compliance obligations. Viewing it also from the lens offering a broader viewpoint helps firms make better decisions for the security of their practice.

EU response to ML scandal: Evidence-informed or perception-driven? (private)

This presentation explores what evidence ‘hidden in plain sight’ in official anti-money laundering rating data reveals about claims justifying the expansion of money laundering controls in response to European bank scandals.

Beyond compliance and rhetoric: Flipping the success rate (private)

Despite three decades of prodigious effort and $300B+ annual compliance costs, the success rate of money laundering controls remains around 0.1%. Every 'solution' in 30 years, and most touted today, are framed in the same narrative and do 'more of the same', constantly 'sweating' the 0.1% impact on serious profit-motivated crime already done well. How can we leverage our experience, and use fresh evidence, different expertise, and new perspectives to advance enforcement capabilities and achieve exceptional outcomes, substantively, demonstrably, and sustainably - and help flip from the 0.1% impact into the 99.9% impact zone? Beyond compliance and rhetoric.

Expand the toolkit: Criminal asset recovery as a crime prevention tool (private)

We're already a leader in criminal asset forfeitures. Yet the impact on crime, terrorism, and their harms, if we're brutally honest, is too low, everywhere. What's our goal, and how can we make it happen? Is “more-of-the-same, twice-as-fast” even possible? But is that still thinking too small? What can we do 'different', for a radical change in outcomes? Is our objective even forfeiture targets, or new ways to advance capabilities to detect, dismantle, prosecute and prevent serious profit-motivated crime and other serious crime with financial indicators, including terrorism? This session is provocative, and concludes with three choices: Let's stay in our comfort zone, test its boundaries, or smash through into somewhere new.

Getting the FATF tick (private)

Many countries were surprised by low ratings after officials diligently attended pre-evaluation training sessions and assiduously followed the advice of ‘in-group’ experts, clearly no guarantee of good ratings. Often, it detracts. Diversity of thought, expertise, and experience, even a healthy disrespect for the sanctity of the rating system, can help secure better ratings. Also an industry-leading database with exclusive insights from all ratings.

Governments have three choices. Ignore AML ratings to focus on meaningful crime prevention outcomes, and risk exclusion from the financial system. Slavishly follow ‘in-group’ rules and risk being punished with poor scores. Or follow the example of a few countries that used an arguably flawed rating system as it is designed, if not intended, for better than expected ratings, irrespective the ‘real’ ML risk, which the current system inadvertently ignores.