Anti-financial Crime

As one of Finland’s largest providers of financial services, OP Financial Group plays an important societal role in combating financial crime. We take this responsibility seriously.

Financial crime has significant, harmful impacts on society. OP Financial Group and other financial service providers play a key role in preventing such crime.

We are committed to protecting our customers and society from financial crime. It is our task to ensure that neither our products nor our services are used to commit crimes. Our financial crime prevention activities are guided by our strict risk management principles and practices.

We invest in anti-financial crime activities

We take anti-financial crime activities extremely seriously. Over the years, we have developed our anti-financial crime processes, practices, internal control, and systems.

OP Financial Group processes billions of transactions a year and uses various systems and experts to monitor them. We continuously invest in financial crime prevention through our employees and system development.

Hundreds of specialists are engaged in anti-financial crime work in OP Financial Group’s central cooperative. Employees of OP cooperative banks and OP Financial Group’s other companies also play an important role in Know Your Customer (KYC) activities, maintaining customer data, monitoring customers’ account transactions, and identifying suspicious activities.

All OP Financial Group employees are regularly trained in matters such as the detection and reporting of unusual transactions. In this way, we ensure that they understand regulations, guidelines and procedures related to anti-money laundering (AML) activities and sanctions.

General principles of financial crime prevention

We apply our Code of Business Ethics in our anti-financial crime activities. All people working in OP Financial Group and on its governing bodies must apply the Code. OP Financial Group has unified risk management principles and practices which all employees must follow. We are committed to complying with local laws and regulations in all our activities.

We subject our principles, guidelines and monitoring to continuous internal supervision. If we identify deficiencies (no matter how small) in our activities, we immediately take development measures.

Our anti-financial crime work is guided by our general principles:

In our operations, we promote the sustainable prosperity, security and wellbeing of our owner-customers and operating region.
Our core values – people first, responsibility, and succeeding together – guide our daily work.

All OP Financial Group employees play a part in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing activities, and in complying with sanctions.

Code of Business Ethics (pdf)

Our three lines of defence

OP Financial Group uses the three lines of defence principle for managing money laundering and sanctions risks.

For us it is important to know our customers

All banks must have sufficient information on the nature and scope of their customers’ activities, their financial status, and their grounds for using banking services. At the start of the customer relationship, we ask our customers to provide various items of personal and customer data. We update such data regularly, for example when a customer begins to use new services.

By requesting information and clarifications, we can understand how our customers normally operate and can spot and investigate uncharacteristic activity. This enables us to comply with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations, and to provide our customers with even better service.

We invest in anti-financial crime activities

General principles of financial crime prevention

Our three lines of defence

For us it is important to know our customers

List of terms used in anti-financial crime work