An analytical study of the financial intelligence units' enforcement mechanisms

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to analyse financial intelligence units' (FIUs') approaches in enforcing compliance and how these units can ensure the application of the most effective enforcement mechanism to secure the best outcome of such regulatory action. Design/methodology/approach – Sources of information consisted of scholarly books, papers and published articles through the web. Findings – FIUs should not concentrate on adopting a purely cooperative style (in terms of soft sanctions) or take the opposite approach and be a tough regulator (applying harsh sanctions on non‐compliant reporting entities). Rather, a more qualitative approach should be adopted, individually tailoring the approach on the basis of an examination of the FIUs' findings on entity non‐compliance, and how it can best operate its mechanism so as to ensure those entities comply effectively with their AML/CTF obligations. Originality/value – This article serves as a fruitful analysis to educate FIUs' personnel, AML/CTF professionals, and reporting entities in terms of achieving the highest level of compliance with AML/CTF laws and regulation. Some studies have discussed FIU enforcement mechanisms generally but, to the best of the author's knowledge, the analytical study of different FIUs' enforcement mechanisms and how to achieve the most effective results to secure compliance is yet to be externally or independently researched and evaluated.