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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of role ambiguity, norms of reciprocity and ethical policy on the insurance agents’ attitude and intention toward selling insurance to high-risk customers.

This study employed partial least squares regression analyses to test the hypothesized relationships in the conceptual model. To ensure that the questionnaires captured the concept as intended, customer risk status and the level of insurance premium were mentioned literally in the scenario.

The findings indicated that the insurance agents’ attitude toward high-risk customers has a significant association with the insurance agents’ behavioral intention. Norms of reciprocity and ethical policy have a significant relationship with the attitude and intention.

High-risk customers may want to buy more insurance. In this case, an adverse selection problem could occur when the insurers lack customer information prior to the insurance transaction. The insurance agents are important marketing channels in the insurance industry. They seek out new customers, gather customer information, and are expected to act in the best interest of the customers. Yet, the insurance agents’ attitude toward high-risk customers is seldom mentioned in the studies on insurance marketing and regulation. This research may make some contributions to the relevant literature because there are few studies in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to present a risk‐based approach to anti‐money laundering (AML) systems.

The paper covers the areas of: customer due diligence, customer acceptance, risk management and implementation.

Regulators and financial institutions need to co‐operate so that AML standards can be set within a risk‐based approach, thus enabling a country to protect itself in the best possible and affordable way.

The paper outlines the controversy present between financial institutions and regulators in the approach to AML.

Money laundering activities were allegedly rampant and poorly regulated in the South African financial markets and financial institutions prior to 1998. In other words, prior to the enactment of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 as amended (POCA), there was no statute that expressly and adequately provided for the regulation of money laundering in South Africa. Consequently, the POCA was enacted to curb organised criminal activities such as money laundering in South Africa. Thereafter, the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001 as amended (FICA) was enacted in a bid to, inter alia, enhance financial regulation and the combating of money laundering in the South African financial institutions and financial markets.

The paper provides an overview analysis of the current legislation regulating money laundering in South Africa. In this regard, prohibited offences and measures that are used to curb money laundering under each relevant statute are discussed. The paper further discusses the regulation and use of customer due diligence measures to combat money laundering activities in South Africa. Accordingly, the regulation of customer due diligence under the FICA and the Banks Act 94 of 1990 as amended (Banks Act) is provided.

It is hoped that policymakers and other relevant persons will use the recommendations provided in the paper to enhance the curbing of money laundering in South Africa.

The paper does not provide empirical research.

The paper is useful to all policymakers, lawyers, law students, regulatory bodies, especially, in South Africa.

The paper seeks to curb money laundering in the economy and society at large, especially in the South African financial markets.

The paper is original research on the South African anti-money laundering regime.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of the size and timing of sales compensations, the management stringency of the insurer and the insurance broker's own moral views on product recommendations made by the brokers.

The data used in this research were gathered from life insurance broker companies in Taiwan.

The results showed that the sales compensations, perceived leniency of the insurer's underwriting and claim policy would affect the product recommendations made by the brokers.

Insurance brokers are one of the most important marketing channels in the insurance industry. However, using the insurance brokers to sell insurance may result in some ethical problems. For example, some insurance brokers may sell insurance to high-risk customers because the high-risk customers may prefer to buy more insurance and that means more sales compensations can be earned. The findings of this research may have some implications for insurance management and insurance regulation.

This study contributes to the understanding of insurance brokers' responses to adverse selection problems (high-risk customers may prefer to buy more insurance) and product recommendation decisions. The issue has been less mentioned in the financial regulation literature.

So far, the term e‐commerce has been primarily associated with communicating the brand and/or enabling sales transactions. However, the next vista for companies operating in the virtual marketplace seems to be e‐service or, delivering value‐added, interactive services to customers. This e‐business function has been left virtually unexplored in the services research literature. In this article, an attempt is made to investigate the impact of organizational reputation, relative advantage, and perceived risk on perceived service quality, trust and behavioral intentions of customers towards adopting e‐services. In the context of an electronic travel service, hypotheses on the relationships between aforementioned variables are investigated by means of an experimental study. The results suggest that the three factors have a significant main effect on the customers’ attitude and behavior towards e‐service. The only exception is that relative advantage does not appear to have a significant impact on customer trust. The results also show that organizational reputation and perceived risk have a combined effect: a good organizational reputation impacts the effect of perceived risk on the three dependent variables. Finally, the three factors appeared to be evenly important in the forming of customers’ attitude and behavior. Again, the only exception is that organizational reputation and perceived risk appear to be more important in terms of trust than relative advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the customer due diligence (CDD) vulnerabilities and to examine and analyze the UAE specific dynamics that make the country exposed to these threats. This research also intends to put on the table suitable solutions and remedial action steps that the UAE government, regulators and financial institutions (FIs) can adopt.

This study is qualitative in nature.

Despite the impressive regulatory framework and the satisfactory practices by FIs, there still remains some UAE specific challenges that make it difficult to undertake CDD for certain customers. The challenges that were identified include difficulties in Arabic names, complications in identifying the beneficial owners, impediments in establishing the source of wealth/funds, concerns with politically exposed persons, the increasing cost of compliance that resulted in a pattern of de-risking within FIs.

The international bodies whose mandate is to formulate the necessary anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism policies and regulations for global implementation together with Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) have published sufficient studies on CDD-related issues in the UAE. Yet on the other hand, very limited literature was found by independent scholars. This paper will, therefore, largely reference publications by Financial Action Task Force, the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report and ACAMS. It will also include works by respected law firms that have operations in the UAE, local publications, government documents, academic papers by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, legal journals and others.

Illicit actors exploit the UAE’s relatively open business environment, a multitude of global banks and exchange houses and global transportation links to undertake illicit financial activity […] the UAE does not have any major anti-money laundering (AML) deficiencies. However, the monitoring of FIs for AML purposes, particularly in the area of CDD, could be improved. This paper unpacks the CDD vulnerabilities and analyzes the UAE specific dynamics that make the country exposed to these threats. This research also puts on the table suitable remedial action steps that the UAE government, regulators and FIs can adopt.

This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the anti-money laundering (AML) failings documented by the US Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) Mexico. This paper focuses in on the key areas of concern raised by the 2012 report in respect of HSBC Mexico (HBMX) such as failure to undertake correct customer due diligence on high risk customers and repeated failings by senior management at HBMX to remedy these problems.

The relevant parts of the Subcommittee report relating to HBMX were examined along with the evidence submitted to the Subcommittee. From this examination, the author then noted the key examples of AML failings at HBMX and then commented on these examples while also referring to academic and regulatory guidance such as that from Financial Action Task Force.

Certain proposals are made throughout the paper, but these remain only suggestive. The key point is that the failings evident in HBMX may very well arise in other institutions, and this paper proposes how these failings may be resolved.

Research for this paper remained limited to second-source references such as the Subcommittee report and the listed Exhibits along with other academic resources. The paper was also peer reviewed by a compliance officer. However, examining the paper from a more practical viewpoint may have struck a better balance between an optimal and realistic level of compliance.

Adopting an analytic approach to the subject of AML controls should aid those who work in compliance daily while also generating further commentary among both regulators and senior management within financial institutions.

The paper is the only one to date to focus on one geographical strand of the AML failings at HSBC and then comment on this from an academic perspective.

The purpose of this study is to understand the profit implications of analytics-driven centralized discriminatory pricing at the headquarter level compared with sales force price delegation in the purchase of an aftermarket good through an indirect retail channel with symmetric information.

Using individual-level loan application and approval data from a North American financial institution and segment-level customer risk as the price discrimination criterion for the firm, the authors develop a three-stage model that accounts for the salesperson’s price decision within the limits of the latitude provided by the firm; the firm’s decision to approve or not approve a sales application; and the customer’s decision to accept or reject a sales offer conditional on the firm’s approval. Next, the authors compare the profitability of this sales force price delegation model to that of a segment-level centralized pricing model where agent incentives and consumer prices are simultaneously optimized using a quasi-Newton nonlinear optimization algorithm (i.e. Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno algorithm).

The results suggest that implementation of analytics-driven centralized discriminatory pricing and optimal sales force incentives leads to double-digit lifts in firm profits. Moreover, the authors find that the high-risk customer segment is less price-sensitive and firms, upon leveraging this segment’s willingness to pay, not only improve their bottom-line but also allow these marginalized customers with traditionally low approval rates access to loans. This points out the important customer welfare implications of the findings.

Substantively, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically investigate the profitability of analytics-driven segment-level (i.e. discriminatory) centralized pricing compared with sales force price delegation in indirect retail channels (i.e. where agents are external to the firm and have access to competitor products), taking into account the decisions of the three key stakeholders of the process, namely, the consumer, the salesperson and the firm and simultaneously optimizing sales commission and centralized consumer price.

The anti-money laundering (AML) frameworks of many countries were generally influenced by the international best practices of money laundering that were first established in 1988 through the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). The general belief is that these international best practices are applicable in all jurisdictions, although most countries are still affected by money laundering. The international best practices are universal measures that were developed as a yardstick to control and curb money laundering globally. Nonetheless, international best practices for money laundering are not tailor-made for specific jurisdictions and/or countries. Therefore, it remains the duty of respective jurisdictions and/or countries to develop their own context-sensitive AML measures in accordance with international best practices. An overview of the AML international best practices that were developed and adopted by several countries are analysed in this paper. These include customer due diligence measures established by the BCBS, the financial action task force (FATF) standards, as well as the ongoing monitoring and the risk-sensitive approach that were implemented to curb money laundering globally.

The article analyses the AML international best practices that were developed and adopted by several countries. These include customer due diligence measures established by the BCBS, the FATF standards, as well as the ongoing monitoring and the risk-sensitive approach that were implemented to curb money laundering globally.

It is hoped that policymakers and other relevant persons will use the recommendations provided in the paper to enhance the curbing of money laundering in financial institutions globally.

The paper does not provide empirical research.

The study is useful to all policymakers, lawyers, law students and regulatory bodies globally.

The study seeks to curb money laundering in the economy and society globally.

The study is original research on the use of AML/counter financing of terrorism international best practices to curb money laundering activities globally.

Risks and uncertainties inherent in the Internet often deter consumers from using it as a shopping channel. Companies usually assume that advanced technologies will solve such problems. This paper argues that many of these problems require non‐technical solutions: solutions that are associated with good business practice. Customer feedback may not only raise technical issues such as security and privacy, but also non‐technical issues such as guaranteed delivery time and the ability to talk live to customer services representatives for help. This paper analyses four aspects of running a business – trust, quality, value, and risk – in an Internet setting and offers three solutions. While there is no complete guarantee of sustainability and profitability in any business, the careful consideration of the issues discussed will help shield the business from pitfalls, which if not detected and dealt with, can cause the closure of an otherwise healthy business.