Financial Crime Compliance Working Group – 2025 ISSA Questionnaire

Financial crime compliance is critical to the integrity of financial systems, preventing illegal activities and helping to ensure that institutions meet their regulatory obligations. To assist Securities Services Providers in addressing financial crime compliance concerns, ISSA’s Financial Crime Compliance Working Group (FCC WG) developed a financial crime compliance questionnaire in 2015 which could be used on its own, or in tandem with an institution’s own internal due diligence questionnaire. The ISSA Questionnaire has now been updated to take into considerations recent market changes, such as risks posed by emerging asset classes and in the context of the evolving geopolitical environment.

The ISSA Questionnaire will enable a Securities Services Provider to have a comprehensive client due diligence framework adequately covering its Securities Services business The benefits include:

• providing Securities Services Providers with a tool to assist them in performing due diligence on Entities addressing the characteristics of cross-border securities relationships
• enabling Securities Services Providers to assess the extent to which any given account relationship complies with the ISSA Financial Crime Compliance Principles, in accordance with their own risk-based approach
• providing Entities with the information that their Securities Services Providers’ due diligence framework is likely to require and to support the Entity in defining its own due diligence objectives, thereby creating awareness and promoting common standards within the securities industry

ISSA encourages its members, as well as the broader Securities Services industry, to incorporate the latest version of the ISSA Questionnaire into their compliance frameworks as soon as possible so that they can continue to address the critical challenges posed by financial crime.

Best regards

Karen Zeeb