Corporate, wholesale, and investment banks operate in a highly complex and regulated environment, facing stringent financial crime compliance obligations. The nature of their business—large-value transactions, institutional clients, correspondent banking relationships, and cross-border operations—exposes them to heightened risks of money laundering, sanctions breaches, market abuse, and fraud.
Lysis Group has extensive experience supporting corporate, wholesale, and investment banks with regulatory compliance, financial crime risk management, and operational resilience. Our expertise covers anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC), transaction monitoring, sanctions compliance, market abuse prevention, and governance frameworks.
Our Expertise Covers
Regulatory Compliance & Financial Crime Frameworks
Corporate, wholesale, and investment banks must adhere tostrict global and regional regulatory requirements, including:
• UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and PrudentialRegulation Authority (PRA) rules
• EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives (AMLDs) and Markets inFinancial Instruments Directive (MiFID II)
• US Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), Patriot Act, and FinCENregulations
• Basel III risk management frameworks
• Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations
Lysis assists banks in designing, implementing, andenhancing compliance frameworks to meet these requirements, ensuring theyremain compliant while maintaining business efficiency.
Know Your Customer (KYC) & Customer Due Diligence(CDD)
Institutional banking clients require rigorous due diligence, particularly for high-risk jurisdictions, politically exposed persons (PEPs), and complex corporate structures. Lysis provides:
• End-to-end KYC process design and implementation
• Enhanced due diligence (EDD) for high-risk clients
• Onboarding process optimisation to reduce delays andimprove client experience
• Ongoing monitoring of client transactions and activities
• KYC remediation and backlog clearance for legacy accounts
Sanctions Screening & Correspondent Banking RiskManagement
Wholesale and investment banks process large internationalpayments and maintain correspondent banking relationships, exposing them tosanctions and AML risks. Lysis supports firms with:
• Sanctions screening solutions (aligned with UK, EU, USOFAC, and UN regimes)
• Correspondent banking risk assessments and due diligenceframeworks
• Trade finance compliance (monitoring for trade-based moneylaundering risks)
• Cross-border transaction monitoring and suspiciousactivity detection
Market Abuse & Conduct Risk Compliance
Investment banks must prevent and detect marketmanipulation, insider trading, and conduct breaches. Lysis helps firms:
• Develop market abuse surveillance frameworks
• Ensure compliance with MiFID II and Market AbuseRegulation (MAR)
• Implement trade surveillance systems to detect suspicioustrading activity
• Conduct employee conduct risk assessments and governancereviews
Enterprise-Wide Risk Assessment (EWRA) & FinancialCrime Governance
A strong governance and risk management framework isessential for large financial institutions. Lysis assists firms in:
• Implementing the Three Lines of Defence (3LoD) model forrisk management
• Conducting EWRAs to identify financial crime risks acrossthe business
• Developing board-level governance frameworks forcompliance oversight
• Regulatory engagement and response preparation for auditsand inspections
Operational Support & Managed Services
Lysis provides specialist operational support to corporate,wholesale, and investment banks, including:
• KYC/CDD remediation and risk reviews
• Transaction monitoring enhancements and alert tuning
• Interim compliance officers, MLROs, and regulatoryspecialists
• Independent financial crime risk audits and reviews
A major global bank, following a merger, had two global trading brands operating across 60+ countries globally.
One of the largest US-based Tech commercial banks needed to build out their offshore capabilities in support of their London operation. This included candidate selection, AML/KYC training, coaching on early cases and then QA of their work. This produced a team of fully trained KYC analysts and a newly established offshore capability.
Two global banks merged and Lysis was asked to manage the integration of the KYC Operations functions globally for the wholesale & Investment Banking division covering 200,000 customers and 65 countries.
A major wholesale and investment bank with global reach was placed under a Section 166 order regarding their KYC and AML controls.
A major global bank needing a data clean-up post banking system implementation
A global financial services firm engaged Lysis Group to support a strategic review of its Financial Crime Risk Management Framework (FCRMF). The review was driven by the need to assess the effectiveness, alignment, and maturity of the firm’s current financial crime controls across key domains.
A US corporate bank in the UK needing BAU On-boarding resources
A major bank with two major trading entities wished to decrease time-to-trade processing overheads for new customers and for new products for existing customers.
A European investment bank had a surge in hits from screening and on-going monitoring in relation to PEPs, sanctions and adverse media monitoring.
A global securities house asked for help enhancing and streamlining its client on-boarding and AML TM capability and to off-shore certain parts of its AML processing.
A UK branch of a prominent Middle Eastern bank operating in the wholesale and correspondent banking space. The bank is subject to UK regulatory oversight and provides services to a range of international clients.
The merger of two global investment banks required the implementation of a single client onboarding firm structure and alignment of systems and procedure to a single global policy.
