In furtherance of their responsibilities under the Anti-money Laundering and Financial Terrorism Act, insurance companies in the country are now transiting from Cash Transactions Reporting (CTR) to Suspicious Transactions Reporting (STR).
The Director of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Mrs. Juliet Ibekaku, disclosed this at the Sensitisation Programme on Anti-Money Laundering and Combat of Financing of Terrorism Control Measures for Insurance Companies in Lagos yesterday.
She said the migration became necessary to enable the fraud prevention unit to identify and stop transactions that may be injurious to the economy in this regard.
“They have been reporting what we call currency transaction report since the NFIU was established in 2006 but that is not sufficient. What we want to see is more of suspicious transactions report,” she said.
According to her, suspicious transactions reporting as required by the law, when the compliance officer sees any potential crime being committed within his company, or that a person in the insurance sector may be used to commit the crime, he reports it to NFIU immediately.
“If they report STR, we can take actions immediately. This is different from CTR which reflects on a daily basis what they deal in as opposed to suspicious transactions which shows that there is a possibility that a financial institution might be used to commit crime,” Ibekaku stated.
“There are two different reports. Here we are trying to emphasise more on the suspicious reporting because NFIU has the powers to restrain transactions and to freeze transactions before they occur,” she added.
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