Post offices, savings and credit cooperatives, rural banks, and microfinance institutions have an important role in Remittances services

Recorded remittances into Africa, grew fourfold between 1990 and 2010 to reach nearly $40 billion in 2010. These funds are the continent’s largest source of foreign capital after foreign direct investments. Recent surveys show that investments such as land purchases, building a home, and starting a business were the highest uses of remittances sent home by the African diaspora.

However, official remittance flows to Africa are significantly underestimated, as only about half of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa collect and report remittance data with any regularity.

It is still very expensive to send remittances to African countries, particularly within Africa. These high remittance costs encourage the use of informal channels and are an unnecessary burden for African migrants and remittance recipients.

Recent recommendations by the African Development Bank and the World Bank indicate organizations with large branch networks, such as post offices, savings and credit cooperatives, rural banks, and microfinance institutions can play an important role to expand access to remittances and other financial services among the poor and in rural communities.

Factors such as exclusive agreements with money transfer operators, which limits competition and tends to increase the cost of sending money should be avoided. The impact and other implications of telecom companies in Africa who offer mobile money transfers and other financial services need to be assessed for banking stability and systemic risk.

Countries from which African migrant workers send money are of course worldwide. Top destinations for African migrants are France (9% of total emigrants), Cote d’Ivoire (8%), South Africa (6%), Saudi Arabia (5%), and the United States and the United Kingdom (4% each).

Citadel Advantage runs a two day intensive course on Payments, Remittances and Opportunities. This course is the definitive A to Z on Remittances – from informal systems to the revolutionary appearance of the Mobile Phone as a remittance tool including an in-depth case study of Kenya’s world standard setting M-PESA system.

The course is intended for any organization in the payments and remittances space – banks, post offices, credit unions, microlenders, development agencies etc.

Where can you catch these courses?

• London on 16 & 17 May 2011
• Johannesburg on 22 & 23 June 2011

For course details and a descriptive brochure please e-mail us at courses@citadeladvantage.com

Please do indicate which course you will be interested in – London or Johannesburg.

Automating your mobile payments and other transactions

Mobile banking apps typically allow customers to view their account details and carry out transactions such as funds transfers. Singapore's OCBC Bank's Android app, released last month, also offers users the ability to scan selected bill barcodes effectively automation payment transactions (and helping ensure STP).

Corporate attorney and Wall Street trader charged in $32 million insider trading ring

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged a corporate attorney and a Wall Street trader with insider trading in advance of at least 11 merger and acquisition announcements involving clients of the law firm where the attorney worked.

The SEC alleges that Matthew H. Kluger, who formerly worked at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Garrett D. Bauer did not have a direct relationship with each other, but were linked only through a mutual friend who acted as a middleman to facilitate the illegal scheme. Kluger and Bauer communicated with the middleman using public telephones and prepaid disposable mobile phones in order to avoid detection. According to the SEC’s complaint, Kluger accessed information on 11 mergers and acquisitions involving the law firm’s clients and then tipped the middleman. In at least nine instances, the middleman passed the information on to Bauer, who illegally traded for illicit profits totaling nearly $32 million.

In a parallel criminal action, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey announced the arrests of Kluger and Bauer.

“They plotted to fly under law enforcement radar by using disposable phones to hide their communications, cash withdrawals to obscure the flow of tainted money, and a middleman to conceal Kluger as the secret source of inside information,” said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Now, those same schemes and devices serve only to make it clear beyond any doubt that Kluger and Bauer were involved in an illegal scheme.”

Daniel M. Hawke, Chief of the SEC’s Market Abuse Unit and Director of its Philadelphia Regional Office, added “This was a brazen and deplorable scheme in which Kluger, a lawyer, repeatedly abused his access to confidential client information. As this and recent cases demonstrate, the Division of Enforcement is working aggressively to root out and identify hard-to-detect insider trading by connecting patterns of trading to sources of material non-public information - whether those sources are law firms or others who are under a duty to keep such information confidential.”

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Newark, N.J., Kluger, Bauer and the middleman deliberately structured their communications and trading so that Kluger and the middleman could share in the insider trading proceeds while Bauer could illegally trade and profit without being connected to Kluger as a possible source of information. Bauer withdrew cash from his bank accounts and kicked back hundreds of thousands of dollars to the middleman, who in turn delivered at least $500,000 to Kluger for his role in the scheme.

According to the SEC’s complaint, over the past five years Kluger accessed and then tipped confidential information in advance of 11 mergers and acquisitions between April 2006 and March 2011:

The middleman traded in two deals on the basis of information that he received from Kluger and profited at least $690,000.

The SEC’s investigation is continuing.

Courses being run in conjunction with Eureka Financial Training

We are delighted to announce that we have scheduled a series of additional training courses with Eureka Financial Training.

These are;

• 28-29 June - London - OPERATIONAL RISK MANAGEMENT
• 4-5 July – Dubai - ERM (Enterprise Risk Management)
• 11-12 July - London - ERM (Enterprise Risk Management)
• 18-20 September – Dubai - OPERATIONAL RISK MANAGEMENT AND MITIGATION
• 21-22 September – Dubai - CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
• 25-26 October - New York - OPERATIONAL RISK MANAGEMENT

For additional details please visit our Public Course Schedule page – CLICK HERE

Mobile Payments and small business

A couple of years ago Jack Dorsey helped co-found Twitter. Now he is revolutionizing retail. Jack Dorsey's latest venture, "Square," a small device that turns any mobile phone or tablet into a credit card reader, is now processing more than $1 million a day in mobile payments

Protecting your personal and financial information from fraudsters

US bank Wells Fargo is offering tips to help people keep fraud prevention in focus as encouraging findings are released in the new 2011 Identity Fraud Survey Report from Javelin Strategy & Research, an independent industry research firm. The study found that the number of reported identity fraud incidents in the US during 2010 had declined 28 percent over 2009.

"Wells Fargo has a long commitment of educating people about fraud and helping them protect themselves,” said Secil Watson, senior vice president, Wells Fargo Internet Services Group. “We offer tips, the Fraud Information Center, and we co-sponsor the Javelin Strategy & Research Identity Fraud Survey Report as part of this commitment. We'd like to see continued declines in reported fraud and we want to underscore the importance of people's continued vigilance in protecting their accounts and personal financial information.”

Online and Mobile Fraud Prevention Tips

Stay Current:

• Keep updated: Keep your computer operating system up-to-date to ensure the highest level of protection. Help protect your computers with regular anti-virus software updates.
• Change passwords: It’s a good idea to regularly change your online banking passwords. Be sure your online banking username and password differ from those used on other websites.
• Use official apps: Mobile banking applications, or "apps," are programs you can download to your mobile device. To ensure the safety of your personal and account information, download mobile apps from reputable sources only.

Be Informed:

• Go paperless and monitor: According to Javelin Strategy & Research, fraudsters continue to use traditional methods to gather information, including paper mail that may contain account numbers or other confidential information. 
• Sign up for alerts: Keep a close watch on your finances to quickly spot suspicious activity. Wells Fargo offers many types of alerts, such as a low balance alert that tells you when your account balance falls below your chosen amount. Based on customer preferences, alerts can be sent through email or to a mobile device for quick notification. 
• Review credit report: At least once a year, check your credit report for any suspicious or unauthorized activity.

Use Caution:

• Be careful what you disclose: If you’re suspicious about a request for your personal information that you've received through an email, text message, website, by mail or phone, first verify the request. Use a legitimate source to confirm the request by calling the number listed on the company's website, billing statement, or on the back of the debit or credit card. Never share your mother’s maiden name, Social Security or Identity number, bank account numbers, or account usernames and passwords. Keep your phone number and home address private so they can't be collected.
• Store a copy of your personal & financial information in a secure location: Take a moment to inventory or photocopy the personal and financial information you carry in your purse or wallet, including items such as your driver’s license and credit cards. Store this list in a secure location. This important step will help you know whom to contact if your wallet or purse is ever lost or stolen.

“The Risk Involved With Trading Foreign Currency”

Foreign exchange trading carries with it some unique risks. These risks may be better understood with a clearer understanding of what foreign exchange trading is and a deeper insight of that nature of the transactions that flow through these systems.

Stanley Epstein, one of our Principal Associates has just published a new article dealing with just this. You can read it HERE.