A company at the centre of a Central Bank of Ireland probe into potentially lax controls including to prevent money laundering says it blocked 1.7 million transactions in just three weeks in October after tightening its internal processes.
One in every eight transactions processed by Ireland’s Prepaid Card Services (PCSIL), part of the former Prepaid Financial Services, were blocked in October after new owner EML ramped-up controls.
At the Australian company’s AGM yesterday, it detailed that in the first three weeks of October, 8.16 million transactions were processed by PCSIL, while 1.17 million were declined as they did not comply with 180 new rule sets it has implemented within its controls.
The rules are designed to prevent risks like money laundering, terrorist financing and fraud.
In May this year, the Central Bank launched a probe into PCSIL which is ongoing.
Yesterday EML chairman Peter Martin said the company is making “solid progress” in its remediation efforts.
In the first quarter of the group’s financial year 2022, PCSIL generated around 30pc of EML’s global revenues.
The company is executing “a comprehensive Remediation Plan” in PCSIL to meet concerns raised by the regulator.
EML previously said the CBI’s concerns relate to the Irish subsidiary’s anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism financing, risk and control frameworks and governance.
Mr Martin said the plan is on track to be “substantially completed” by the end of the year, with any outstanding items to be in place by March next year.
The CBI has been concerned about the rapid rate of growth of PCSIL, the chairman said in an address to EML shareholders.
“We think this can be managed and we have already eliminated some legacy, high-volume and low-margin programmes under PCSIL and created significant headroom for growth at potentially better margins,” he said in a report for its AGM.
In May, shares in EML plunged almost 50pc after a two-day halt in trading, following an announcement from the company of the CBI probe.
The shares have recovered somewhat since then, however they remain down 30pc in the year-to-date.
EML chief executive Tom Cregan also addressed the shareholders and said the company has been working “constructively” with the regulator here.
“As outlined in August and reiterated today, the Central Bank of Ireland has not identified any instances of financial crime, AML [anti-money laundering] or CTF [counter terrorist financing] events, nor deficiencies with respect to safeguarding, capital adequacy, or solvency measures.”
