Perodically we will feature scholarly articles, white papers and reports that are relevant to the banking industry at the present time. The current articles are as follows:

Global Anti-Money Laundering Survey 2007

Money laundering by drug dealers, arms traffickers and other criminals is estimated to be in excess of US$1 trillion worldwide every year. With rapid change in the financial services industry in recent years, alongside increased regulatory expectations and pressures, combating money laundering and terrorist financing continues to be a major challenge for the banking sector.

KPMG's second global anti-money laundering (AML) survey looks at how banks around the world are approaching AML. It also focuses on the specific issues facing banks in the various geographical regions.

KPMG 2007 Regional Banking Survey: Travel, Leisure and Tourism

The survey covered banks with an aggregate exposure to the hospitality industry in the Caribbean of more than US$2.5 billion, and included large cross-jurisdictional and international banks.The surveys were conducted directly with senior commercial lending decision makers from each of the participating banks, which collectively noted significant exposure in the region, totaling more than US$2.6 billion.

The detailed questionnaire was structured around the following key topics:

Outlook for the region

Market and location

Financing trends

Industry trends