On October 26, 2001, after the September 11 terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center, the United States Congress passed the U.S.
Patriot Act, which may be cited as the ?Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act'.
It aims at strengthening the ability of the United States to fight terrorism,
and to prevent and detect money laundering and the financing of terrorist
activities.
Ocean Systems, a developing and consulting company
specialized in software solutions for the financial and banking sectors, and
which has been operating in the American market since 1990, upgraded its
products to the new requirements, and launched a new system called Enhanced
Compliance Solution (ECS).
ECS, which uses GXFlow and was developed with GeneXus, is
a monitoring system designed to help financial institutions detect money
laundering operations and enforce the Patriot Act.
ECS analyzes each account and related accounts, looking
for patterns of behavior that may indicate any suspicious activity. After
detecting such activities, the ECS system generates alerts that are sent to the
account officers and appropriate personnel. ECS also monitors clients, and
account activity as required by the Act, automatically generating alerts as soon
as unusual behavior is detected.
These alerts start the Workflow cycles, which are
processed with GXFlow. "GXFlow sends the tasks to the account officers and the
bank personnel until the process is satisfactorily concluded," explained Fabian
Vigna, ECS Project Leader. ECS is installed in several Miami banking
institutions, in both local and international branches.
"We did not know about GeneXus, and were looking for a
tool that allowed us to handle and administer the Workflow, which is a
fundamental part of our system. After evaluating several products, we decided to
adopt GXFlow, since it was the product that better suited our requirements in
terms of cost/benefit," said Vigna. "The decision to start using GeneXus as a
development tool was a suggestion from Veronica Buitron who recommended we
evaluate the advantages of developing with GeneXus, and she was right," he
added.
"We are very pleased with GXFlow's features. Besides using
it on ECS, we plan to use it on other business process management applications
such as payment and loan application systems," he said.
Among Ocean Systems' clients are BAC Florida Bank, Banco
Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Banco Santander Central Hispano, Banco Sofitasa -
Venezuela, BankUnited, F.S.B., Citibank, Colonial Bank, Del Sur E.A.P.,
Venezuela, Eastern National Bank, Fleet/Bank Boston, Lloyds TSB, Mellon United,
and the Ocean Bank of Miami.
Ocean Systems Inc.
http://www.oceansys.com