Hwawoo Launches "AML/Internal Control Solution Center"

One-Stop Advisory Service for Institutional Design and Regulatory Response

Hwawoo, a law firm, announced on March 4 that it has launched the "AML/Internal Control Solution Center" to proactively respond to anti-money laundering (AML) and internal control regulatory environments.

(From left) Jisoo Park, Senior Consultant; Yeomyung Ha, Consultant; Seongbin Jeong, Attorney (4th Bar Exam); Minkang Jeong, Senior Specialist; Sanghyun Park, Advisor; Bohyun Lee, Attorney (Judicial Research and Training Institute 36th class); Ikyeong Jang, Consultant. Hwawoo

The center features an integrated advisory system in which experts from financial authorities, professionals with extensive consulting experience in related fields, and attorneys specialized in AML regulations and sanctions response work in close collaboration. Through this, the center aims to provide consistent and strategic solutions throughout the entire process—from the institutional design stage to work process and system improvement, internal control restructuring, and responding to supervision and inspections—for major domestic and international banks, securities firms, insurance companies, specialized credit finance companies, electronic financial service providers, and virtual asset service providers.

Recently, the importance of revising relevant laws and systems has increased, especially as major countries, including Korea, have strengthened measures against money laundering, tax evasion, and international financial crimes. This trend is driven by the rigorous implementation of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards, the expansion of automatic exchange of financial information between countries, and the tightening of global financial sanctions regulations. As a result, regulatory intensity and the level of supervision in the financial sector have also increased significantly.

The center's team consists of experts such as Mingang Jeong, Senior Expert Commissioner; Jisoo Park, Senior Consultant; Hayeom Ha, Principal Consultant; and Ikyeong Jang, Consultant—all of whom have accumulated extensive consulting experience in the Financial Services Industry (FSI) consulting division of Deloitte Anjin. They handle a broad range of consulting work, including improvement of work processes, establishment of governance frameworks, and system verification and enhancement. In particular, Advisor Sanghyun Park, former head of the Financial Supervisory Service’s AML division, along with attorneys Bohyun Lee (Judicial Research and Training Institute 36th Class), Kyungok Song (39th Class), Minseok Joo (Bar Exam 1st Batch), Sangbin Lee (Bar Exam 3rd Batch), and Seongbin Jung (Bar Exam 4th Batch), oversee regulatory issues such as legal compliance reviews and sanction risk, working closely together.

The center’s solutions cover ▲pre-assessment and establishment of AML systems ▲response to automatic exchange of financial information between countries (FATCA/CRS) ▲consulting on compliance systems for financial sanctions ▲diagnosis and improvement of internal control systems ▲support for supervision and sanctions by financial regulatory authorities.

In the AML domain, the center provides services such as revising anti-money laundering policies and internal regulations, refining money laundering risk management frameworks, and assessing the adequacy of customer due diligence and suspicious transaction reporting systems. In the FATCA/CRS field, it checks the integrity of account identification, classification, and reporting procedures, and supports the secure implementation of these systems. For financial sanctions, the center advises on building responsive systems that minimize sanction violation risks by analyzing domestic and international regulatory trends and evaluating the adequacy of screening systems, screening procedures, and internal approval and control processes. In the area of internal controls, the center restructures control systems by reflecting supervisory authorities’ inspection standards and recent sanction cases, and presents practical improvement plans that include the appropriateness of management responsibility structures and reporting systems.

Myeongsoo Lee, Managing Partner of Hwawoo, stated, "At a time when anti-money laundering systems are being strengthened across all financial institutions, the launch of this center marks our commitment to building more advanced AML and internal control system frameworks," adding, "Based on Hwawoo’s strengths and deep understanding in the financial sector, we aim to establish ourselves as a leading law firm for financial companies in this field as well."

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