About

About us

Who We Are

We are an association of 12 global banks which aims to develop frameworks and guidance for the management of financial crime risks.

Our members are senior financial crime compliance leaders from our member banks. We work jointly through various Working Groups to develop new documents or update existing ones.

What We Do

The financial crime compliance sphere continues to evolve rapidly. Professionals in this industry can use our various user-friendly guidance documents and other resources to deepen their understanding of the issues and to meet both internal objectives and regulatory requirements.

Our materials provide you with an industry perspective on effective financial crime risk management. You will need to adapt them to your needs, considering the risks described, the applicable regulatory standards, your business profile and your institution’s defined risk management strategy.

As the leading voice in banking committed to combatting financial crime,

the Group's approach is to build on its unique profile to provide practical guidance developed by practitioners for practitioners and help improve the effectiveness of financial crime compliance.

Working Groups

Our Working Groups bring together expert practitioners and cover a wide range of financial crime-related topics to issue new publications, or update older ones as needed. Our work allows us to collect best practices from our members to advise and support the industry.

CBDDQ/FCCQ

The Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ) covers a wide range of financial crime risks and is the successor to the Wolfsberg AML Questionnaire which was first issued in 2004.

The CBDDQ is revised and updated periodically on an as needed basis. A shorter version, the Wolfsberg Group Financial Crime Compliance Questionnaire (FCCQ), was also developed to designed to address relationships other than those deemed higher risk.

Advocacy

The Group also works towards promoting engagement between public and private sectors in combatting illicit financial activity. We work closely with international standard setters, national law enforcement, financial intelligence units, supervisors, and regulators to find routes to achieving the shared goal that of preventing the misuse of the global financial system.

Chateau Wolfsberg

The Group is considered as one of the first and oldest Collective Action Initiatives focused on financial crime compliance. We first met in 2000, at the Château Wolfsberg, in north-eastern Switzerland, to develop the AML Principles for Private Banking that were published in October 2000, which have since been revised and updated. The Group became a legal entity in October 2021. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland at the Basel Institute on Governance's premises, it is coordinated by a Secretariat and headed by Executive Secretary Alan Ketley.

Timeline

Since its inception in 2000, the Wolfsberg Group has published a number of documents to provide guidance and better understanding around Financial Crime Compliance issues across the industry.