The Ireland Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce (ILCC) has announced that it will host a financial services event titled "The Burden of Compliance and the Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences of AML - The Way Forward".
Taking place on Tuesday 10 February 2026 at 18:30 at the Banque de Luxembourg (14 Boulevard Royal, 2449) in Luxembourg-Ville, the event aims to examine whether current approaches to anti-money laundering (AML), including enforcement by banks and obliged entities, have triggered major negative unintended social and economic consequences.
The ILCC acknowledged that money laundering is a serious crime that has many victims and governments must address it. Money laundering involves profits derived from criminal activities, such as people smuggling and human trafficking, sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, corruption, fraud, theft, environmental crime, tax crime and many others.
According to the ILCC, the current approach outsources a major proportion of enforcement to the private sector through a compliance-led model. ILCC estimates that global compliance costs currently range between $180 to $250 billion.
The ILCC stated that, while this compliance-led approach acts as a disincentive to money laundering, banks and other obliged entities bear significant unintended costs and face increased risks of non-compliance.
At the same time, reportedly less than 1% of illicit laundered funds are being recovered, which raises questions about the effectiveness of current methods.
The keynote speaker at this event is Richard Meads (Business Decisions Ltd), who has worked with various Brussels think tanks on regulatory impact assessment (RIA) of EU legislation. He was part of the original team that successfully advocated for its introduction via the Amsterdam Treaty. Since 1995, he has also contributed to the development of the OECD’s global Better Regulation policy, including requirements for regulators to consider risk-risk set out in 2012. He specialises in Better Regulation, regulatory effectiveness/ efficiency and the use of ex ante and ex post evaluations. He also works to highlight occurrence of risk-risk in regulation. The ILCC clarified that risk-risk is an established concept whereby regulation designed to mitigate one risk inadvertently creates new ones.
The programme will begin at 18:00 with registration, followed by a welcome address from ILCC Chairman Joe Huggard at 18:30 and, right after, a keynote address from Richard Meads. Around 19:00, panellists will share their perspectives; these include: Brian Hayes, Chief Executive Officer of the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland; Yann Power, Independent Director and governance and compliance coach and member of various Institut Luxembourgeois des Administrateurs (ILA) and ALFI working groups; and a representative of the Luxembourg banking community (TBC). A panel discussion, audience questions and a moderator’s summation will follow, before the event concludes with a networking cocktail at around 20:15.
Admission is free of charge. However, for security reasons, participants must register in advance by completing the online form, via https://forms.gle/6akutuAVm8pvScQi9.
