The background to Risk Values is that it was developed for financial institutions to add depth - and a unique perceptiveness - to their Know Your Customer regime.

Risk Values is not a due diligence tool as such. It does not replace the standard checks on identity and source of funds. But it does provide valuable insight into whether the people you are dealing with display certain aspects of their personality that indicate to you that you should apply enhanced monitoring to their activities.

The original motivation for the Risk Values concept came from the aftermath of the reaction to the events of 11 September 2001. However, the product has been designed so that it operates in both a provider/customer risk assessment situation and in the recruitment process.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, those in financial institutions were told to take steps to eliminate the flows of money intended to fund terrorism.

Mistakenly, this was often referred to as "money laundering."

Those from certain ethnic and religious groups found that their accounts were frozen, closed or under close monitoring purely because of racial and religious factors.

Financial services businesses found that transaction monitoring did little to help because money destined for terrorism is, often, not "dirty money".

Out of these problems was born the concept of Risk Values : a tool to help those in financial services identify those account holders and applicants for business who may display personality traits that indicate the potential to enter into or use an account relationship for the purposes of funding terrorism, money laundering or fraud.

With the aim of forewarning financial services businesses that an account holder is worthy of special caution, Risk Values can help save your business time, money and improve relations with customers.

In recent years, there have been a number of cases in which employees of financial institutions have deliberately bypassed internal systems and controls and caused substantial losses - sometimes bringing large organisations to the brink of collapse or, in the case of Barings, actually breaking the bank. These cases have happened all over the world - Barings in Singapore, Daiwa in the USA, Sumitomo in London, AllFirst in the USA and the biggest so far Société Générale in France. And in relation to operating a grand money laundering scheme within a bank, Bank of New York in London and New York.

All of them displayed certain personality tendencies - tendencies which are both discernible and measurable.

That's what Risk Values does.