FAQ

What is SILO?

SILO is an easy-to-use application that enables you to archive and retrieve your client due diligence materials; to risk-rate and monitor your clients; to run the necessary reports on them; and to train your staff. It is, therefore, the ideal application to meet all your AML obligations.

With SILO you can identify higher-risk clients, see which clients still have outstanding due diligence, learn when clients are due for monitoring or have expired documentation on file and satisfy yourself that all your staff have been adequately trained. Additionally, immediately upon log-in, SILO provides you with critical statistics on your AML compliance obligations.

In this economy, how can we justify spending money on a new compliance application?

SILO’s licence fee is one of the lowest on the market. And since SILO can eliminate additional overhead as your business grows, or actually increase revenues when you no longer feel you have to turn away business for fear of taking on too much risk, the ROI can be significant.

Most importantly, SILO should also help you avoid falling victim to fines, increased inspection or negative reputational issues if your business fails to meet proper compliance standards.

As with any good investment, whatever small upfront cost there may be should pay for itself many times over as time goes by.

What makes SILO different from other AML systems?

Many features do, including:

• Clear visuals at log-in provide senior management with immediate compliance status updates.
• Dashboards for compliance staff show outstanding due diligence and client monitoring due.
• Multiple permission levels allow greater access across your business, while protecting data integrity.
• Customisable data fields are designed to accommodate your particular business and client base.

Built primarily with the user in mind, SILO is simple to learn and use. Reports are easy to produce, and there’s no longer any need to rely on spreadsheets generated and/or maintained by multiple staff members.

Training sections allow you to customise your own training program, which staff can take at their convenience.

Learning a new software system can be complicated and time consuming. Is SILO different?

It is. Although our standard license agreement provides for up to 20 hours of online training, we’ve never had a licensee need more. This is because we put a high priority on ease of use and intuitive design.

As former compliance professionals, we know what it is like to spend hours training new users on a complex system who then avoid using that system. SILO’s user-friendliness has eliminated that problem.

Can SILO help with real risk analysis?

Yes. SILO provides a risk score feature so you can ensure consistent risk rating and various fields to help you document your own risk analysis and mitigation.

For the more mechanical requirements of AML regulation, conventional “box-ticking” features are also available.

Can SILO help with trusts and businesses in addition to people?

SILO is flexible and comprehensive enough to handle data collection on trusts, partnerships and corporate entities and their “associated individuals” like members, partners, shareholders, directors and officers.

Additionally, for trusts, SILO collects and stores data on all relevant parties, including settlors, trustees and beneficiaries.

We can’t seem to keep the regulator satisfied with our current system. Can SILO help?

Regulators will not endorse a software, however, we showed SILO to several regulators and designed some of its reports and the dashboard based on their comments. We also monitor changes to AML regulations to ensure SILO will help you easily meet new regulatory requirements.

We want to know more about our clients that simply nationality and date of birth. Can SILO help with that?

Yes. SILO allows you to capture any other helpful information, such as connected industries and/or businesses and other relevant jurisdictions.

A “Notes” section also provides space for any additional data you might think is important.

We have a variety of job descriptions here, each with different responsibilities and training needs. A one-size-fits-all compliance training program isn’t realistic. How can SILO help?

SILO lets you assign training by user level. You can also upload your own training videos, quizzes and documents. SILO then tracks and records when a staff member has completed training and what his/her results were. This makes complying with statutory training obligations easier than ever.

We can’t get a handle on who does what on our staff- or even how well they do it. How can SILO help in that regard?

You can assign an individual compliance staff member to each of your clients. You can then run reports on that staff member’s overall workload, to use in his/her evaluations and general supervision.

We already have a system and would like to convert to SILO, but we’re a little nervous about the transition.

One of our best features is how easy it is to transfer data from an old system to SILO, using an Excel or CSV file import. All we need is to start with is to talk to your IT team. Then we will build a plan to migrate your data to SILO. It’s that simple.

Who owns and operates SILO?

SILO is owned by SILO (BVI) Ltd, a British Virgin Islands company jointly owned by Kimberly Smith and Charles Jennings (details below).

SILO (BVI) Ltd licenses SILO to SILO Compliance Ltd (“SCL”), a Cayman Islands company. SCL sub-licences it to customers.

Charles Jennings retired in 2009 as worldwide managing partner of an international law firm (148 lawyers worldwide) in the Cayman Islands, where he still lives and works. During his time with that firm (1986 – 2009), he also lived in the British Virgin Islands for a year to open and manage a new office there, and managed the firm's London office for two years before returning to the Cayman Islands to manage the firm globally. He was president of the Cayman Islands Law Society from 2001 to 2012, and is formerly chairman of the Cayman Islands Financial Services Legislative Committee and was a commissioner on its constitutional Judicial and Legal Services Commission.

Charles is a UK citizen with Caymanian status, and apart from those overseas postings has lived in the Cayman Islands for 30 years.

Kimberly Smith was the head of compliance and MLRO at the London office of the same firm. She spent several years there working on front-line AML compliance, and it was on the basis of that hands-on practical experience that SILO was conceived. Kimberly is an American citizen. She received her Graduate Diploma in Anti Money Laundering from the International Compliance Association and her Bachelor’s in Finance from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.