Tourvest Financial Services has gone live with a new generation point-of-sale and trading compliance solution under a five-year agreement to implement IMX Software’s GTS-Retail software in conjunction with the leading real-time sanctions and PEP checking service from ComplyAdvantage. IMX Software is the global leader in currency trading and travel money technology.
Tourvest Financial Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of leading South African tourism group, Tourvest Holdings, and supplies and exchanges currencies to inbound and outbound travelers, sells prepaid travel cards and operates as a major agent for Western Union money transfers. It has used IMX solutions for two decades and deployed IMX’s new generation GTS-Retail in August to strengthen regulatory compliance in line with a FIC-mandated risk-based approach which requires implementation by April 2019.
GTS-Retail is integrated to the ComplyAdvantage sanctions and PEP checking service to allow Tourvest to identify customers where enhanced due diligence would be required to be conducted, should the trading risk be deemed to exceed parameters agreed with the FIC. The new approach adopted by Tourvest will be audited by SARB.
GTS-Retail will mandate the collection of additional information on the client, if required, by blocking further steps in the sale process until certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the capture of additional identity or bank account information from the client.
Says Marlize van der Schyff, Financial and IT Director at Tourvest Financial Services: “Regulators are expecting South African financial services companies, including forex bureaus, to constantly improve their reporting and monitoring standards. GTS-Retail in conjunction with ComplyAdvantage will enable us to apply more stringent regulatory requirements while ensuring rapid transaction processing times and fast customer service. Furthermore, the additional data captured by GTS-Retail will add value to our data warehouse resource to allow the analysis of trading patterns and identification of new risks in order to rapidly adapt our compliance processes.”
GTS-Retail is a modern, easy-to-use, multi-language point of sale system enabling forex providers and banknote traders to serve customers quickly, while efficiently managing their business and inventory. Centralized administration and reporting provide a clear view of performance and ensure that trading, AML, KYC and other business-specific rules are enforced.
GTS-Retail is tailored to the needs of the South African market, with compliance modules for South African Reserve Bank FinSurv reporting as well as integration with the Financial Intelligence Centre’s goAML software for reporting of larger cash transactions, suspicious transactions and international fund transfers.
In addition, Western Union and MasterCard integration eliminates dual capture of transactions, and International Reference Systems’ banknote verification allows tellers to verify banknote security features for all currencies. Over and above the standard features, IMX developed a number of functions to cater for Tourvest’s unique business requirements.
Says Hennie Pretorius, General Manager at IMX Software: “GTS-Retail provides a functionally-rich platform with all the integration required to reduce processing time while remaining compliant. ComplyAdvantage’s sanctions screening with powerful, flexible ‘fuzzy matching’ search capability allows our customers to screen more accurately and cut through the noise by reducing false positives.”