Mikhail Karataev

The ongoing turmoil in the Middle East has highlighted the complexities of successful anti-money-laundering compliance in a conflict zone. U.S. banks need to step up their game in order to stay safe.

Time and again, seemingly successful bank mergers have been rocked by revelations of poor anti-money-laundering compliance. Assessing the AML risk of a potential merger partner is extremely tricky.

An uptick in fines associated with anti-money-laundering failures demonstrates that U.S. banks still have much work to do in terms of optimizing their internal systems to identify and stop the flow of dirty money.

For a country that relies on the energy and drive of immigrants to the extent that the U.S. does, it's surprisingly hard for them to get bank accounts. It's time to reassess what we mean by money-laundering risks.

Past crises have created opportunities for criminal organizations to inject their funds into the legitimate banking system. Bankers can't allow that to happen again.

Banks in the U.S. tend to exist for about half the life span of the average human being. It doesn't have to be that way.