National Risk Assessments
5 minutes
5 Questions
A National Risk Assessment (NRA) is a country-level exercise in which a jurisdiction systematically identifies, analyzes, and evaluates its money laundering (ML), terrorist financing (TF), and increasingly proliferation financing (PF) risks. The requirement stems from FATF Recommendation 1, which obliges countries to understand their risks and to apply a risk-based approach (RBA) so that preventive and enforcement resources are allocated proportionately to the threats and vulnerabilities actually present. For a CAMS professional, the NRA is a foundational document because it links the international standard-setting of FATF to domestic regulatory regimes and to the institutional risk assessments conducted by banks, money services businesses, casinos, and other obliged entities. Methodologically, an NRA examines three dimensions: threats (predicate crimes such as drug trafficking, corruption, tax evasion, fraud, and human trafficking, plus terrorist groups operating or raising funds domestically), vulnerabilities (weaknesses in the legal framework, supervision, beneficial ownership transparency, cash intensity of the economy, informal value transfer systems, virtual assets, and specific sectors), and consequences (the economic, social, and reputational harm that would result). Countries often use the World Bank or IMF tools, or their own frameworks, and draw on suspicious activity report data, law enforcement intelligence, prosecution statistics, and private-sector input. Collaboration is central: effective NRAs are produced through coordination among the FIU, supervisors, law enforcement, customs, tax authorities, and intelligence agencies, with consultation of industry and public-private partnerships. The results should be published, at least in summary, so that reporting entities can incorporate national findings into their own enterprise-wide risk assessments, customer risk rating models, and transaction monitoring scenarios. FATF mutual evaluations assess under Immediate Outcome 1 whether a country's NRA is credible, current, and actually drives policy, legislation, supervisory priorities, and resource allocation. NRAs should be refreshed periodically, typically every few years, and supplemented by sectoral or thematic assessments as new risks, such as emerging technologies or geopolitical sanctions evasion, develop.
National Risk Assessments (NRAs): A Complete CAMS Study Guide
1. Why National Risk Assessments Matter
A National Risk Assessment (NRA) is the foundation stone of the risk-based approach (RBA) that underpins the entire modern anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) framework. Before a country can decide where to deploy supervisors, investigators, legislation and enforcement resources, it needs an evidence-based understanding of where money laundering (ML), terrorist financing (TF) and, increasingly, proliferation financing (PF) risks actually sit. The NRA provides that understanding.
For the CAMS exam, NRAs matter because they connect several core syllabus themes: the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations, the RBA, national cooperation and coordination, mutual evaluations, and the risk assessment obligations of individual financial institutions (FIs) and designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs). A strong grasp of NRAs helps you answer questions across the Regulatory Regimes, Risk Assessments and Collaboration domain and beyond.
Key reasons NRAs are important:
• They allow governments to allocate scarce resources to the highest-risk areas rather than spreading effort evenly.
• They provide a shared national picture of threats, vulnerabilities and consequences that regulators, law enforcement, the financial intelligence unit (FIU) and the private sector can all use.
• They justify the application of enhanced measures to higher-risk sectors and, where risk is demonstrably low, simplified measures to lower-risk sectors.
• They are a prerequisite for a credible mutual evaluation result: FATF assessors examine whether a country understands its own risks before judging the effectiveness of everything else.
• They feed directly into the enterprise-wide risk assessments that FIs are required to perform, giving institutions authoritative input on country, sector, product and customer risk.
2. What a National Risk Assessment Is
An NRA is a structured, government-led exercise to identify, assess and understand the ML/TF (and often PF) risks facing a jurisdiction, and to document the findings so that policy, supervision, enforcement and private-sector compliance can be aligned to those risks.
The FATF basis
• FATF Recommendation 1 (Assessing risks and applying a risk-based approach) requires countries to identify, assess and understand their ML/TF risks, to designate an authority or mechanism to coordinate the response, and to apply resources and measures commensurate with the risks identified. Following amendments, R.1 also requires countries to identify and assess proliferation financing risks related to targeted financial sanctions.
• FATF Recommendation 2 (National cooperation and coordination) requires national AML/CFT policies informed by the risks identified, and effective coordination mechanisms among policymakers, the FIU, law enforcement, supervisors and other competent authorities.
• Immediate Outcome 1 of the FATF effectiveness methodology assesses whether ML/TF risks are understood and whether actions are coordinated domestically to combat them. A weak or outdated NRA is one of the most common reasons countries score poorly here.
• FATF published Guidance on National Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment (2013), which sets out principles rather than a mandatory method. Countries may use the World Bank NRA tool, the IMF model, or their own methodology.
The core concepts
FATF frames risk as a function of three elements:
• Threat: the persons, groups, objects or activities with the potential to cause harm, for example organised crime groups, corrupt officials, terrorist organisations, and the predicate offences generating criminal proceeds (drug trafficking, fraud, tax crime, corruption, human trafficking).
• Vulnerability: the weaknesses that can be exploited by the threat, such as gaps in legislation, weak supervision of a sector, cash intensity, anonymity features of products, porous borders, or weak beneficial ownership transparency.
• Consequence: the impact or harm that ML/TF would cause, including damage to the financial system, the economy, national security and society.
Risk is therefore the combination of threats and vulnerabilities, weighted by consequence. Students sometimes confuse threat and vulnerability: remember that a threat is the criminal actor or activity, while a vulnerability is the weakness in the system that lets the threat succeed.
Who conducts it
NRAs are conducted by national competent authorities, typically coordinated by the ministry of finance, ministry of justice, the FIU or a dedicated interagency committee. Participants usually include the FIU, law enforcement and prosecutors, financial and DNFBP supervisors, customs and tax authorities, intelligence services and, importantly, the private sector through consultation. FIs do not conduct the NRA, but they contribute data and perspectives and are expected to use the results.
Related assessments you should recognise
• Supranational Risk Assessment (SNRA): produced by the European Commission under the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives; member states must also conduct their own NRAs and take the SNRA into account.
• Sectoral risk assessments: deeper dives into specific sectors such as virtual asset service providers, legal persons and arrangements, non-profit organisations (NPOs) or real estate.
• Terrorist financing and proliferation financing risk assessments: often produced as separate documents, for example the United States issues a National Money Laundering Risk Assessment, a National Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment and a National Proliferation Financing Risk Assessment.
• Institutional (enterprise-wide) risk assessments: performed by individual FIs and DNFBPs; these are distinct from, but informed by, the NRA.
3. How a National Risk Assessment Works
Step 1: Scoping and governance
A lead agency or interagency committee is designated under R.2. The scope is defined, covering ML, TF and PF, the sectors to be analysed, the time period and the methodology to be used. Confidentiality arrangements are agreed because some inputs are sensitive intelligence.
Step 2: Identification
Authorities gather quantitative and qualitative information: suspicious transaction report (STR) statistics from the FIU, prosecution and confiscation data, supervisory findings, crime statistics, typology reports, international reports (FATF and FATF-style regional body evaluations, Egmont Group material), economic and demographic data, and private-sector input through surveys, workshops and interviews. The aim is to list the threats, the vulnerabilities and the channels through which illicit funds move.
Step 3: Analysis
Each identified threat and vulnerability is analysed for its nature, source, likelihood and potential consequences. Sectors (banking, money or value transfer services, casinos, real estate, dealers in precious metals and stones, lawyers, accountants, trust and company service providers, virtual asset service providers) are rated on inherent risk, the quality of mitigating controls and residual risk. Products, delivery channels, customer types and geographic exposure are assessed in a similar way.
Step 4: Evaluation and prioritisation
Findings are compared against the country's risk appetite and prioritised. Typical outputs include a ranking of the highest-risk predicate offences, the sectors most exposed, the TF threats relevant to the jurisdiction, and the main structural vulnerabilities such as beneficial ownership opacity or cash reliance.
Step 5: Action planning
Under R.1 and R.2, the NRA must lead to action. Countries normally publish an AML/CFT national strategy or action plan setting out legislative changes, supervisory priorities, resourcing decisions, outreach programmes and performance measures. Where risk is higher, enhanced measures are mandated; where risk is proven lower, simplified measures or exemptions may be permitted under strictly limited conditions.
Step 6: Dissemination
FATF expects countries to make NRA results available to competent authorities, self-regulatory bodies, FIs and DNFBPs. Most countries publish a public version while retaining a classified annex. Dissemination matters because the private sector cannot apply the RBA properly without knowing the national risk picture.
Step 7: Review and update
Risks evolve, so NRAs are living documents. FATF expects them to be kept up to date; many jurisdictions update every three to five years, with interim sectoral or thematic refreshes. New risks such as virtual assets, trade-based money laundering, sanctions evasion and cyber-enabled fraud have driven recent updates in many countries.
How FIs use the NRA
An FI's enterprise-wide risk assessment should explicitly reference the NRA (and any SNRA or sectoral assessments) when rating customer types, products, delivery channels and geographies. Compliance officers use NRA findings to calibrate customer due diligence (CDD) and enhanced due diligence (EDD), to tune transaction monitoring scenarios toward the predicate offences flagged as high risk, to design training and to brief senior management and the board. Regulators and examiners frequently ask institutions to demonstrate how NRA findings have been incorporated. Importantly, the NRA supplements but never replaces the FI's own risk assessment; an institution's specific customer base and business model may create risks the NRA does not emphasise.
Common NRA findings worth knowing
Across jurisdictions, NRAs repeatedly highlight: cash and cash-intensive businesses; money or value transfer services and informal remittance; real estate; legal persons, trusts and the professionals who create them; high-end dealers in luxury goods; casinos and gambling; correspondent banking; trade finance; and virtual assets. Frequently cited predicate threats include fraud, drug trafficking, tax evasion, corruption and foreign proceeds laundered through international financial centres. TF findings often focus on small-value self-funding, abuse of NPOs and cross-border cash movement.
4. Exam Tips: Answering Questions on National Risk Assessments
Tip 1: Anchor every answer in FATF Recommendation 1 and Immediate Outcome 1. If a question asks about the purpose or legal basis of an NRA, the best answer will reference the requirement to identify, assess and understand ML/TF (and PF) risks and to apply a risk-based approach. Recommendation 2 is the answer when the question emphasises coordination among domestic agencies.
Tip 2: Know who is responsible. The NRA is conducted by national competent authorities with private-sector consultation. Any option suggesting that individual banks, external auditors or FATF itself conduct a country's NRA is a distractor. FATF assesses whether a country has done it; it does not perform the assessment.
Tip 3: Remember that the NRA is an input, not a substitute. A classic exam distractor says an FI can rely on the NRA instead of performing its own enterprise-wide risk assessment. This is wrong. The correct position is that the FI must conduct its own assessment and incorporate NRA findings into it.
Tip 4: Distinguish threat, vulnerability and consequence. If a scenario describes an organised crime group laundering drug proceeds, that is a threat. If it describes weak supervision of money service businesses or lax beneficial ownership rules, that is a vulnerability. If it describes damage to the integrity of the financial system, that is a consequence.
Tip 5: Link the NRA to resource allocation and proportionality. When a question asks what a country should do with NRA results, look for the answer that applies enhanced measures to higher-risk areas and permits simplified measures only where lower risk has been demonstrated, and that allocates supervisory and enforcement resources accordingly. Answers that apply identical controls everywhere ignore the RBA and are usually incorrect.
Tip 6: Expect scenario questions about a compliance officer's response. If a newly published NRA rates a sector or product your institution serves as high risk, the best answer typically involves updating the institutional risk assessment, adjusting CDD/EDD and monitoring, reporting to senior management and the board, and updating training. Avoid answers that involve immediately exiting all affected customers without analysis, or ignoring the NRA because the institution has never had an issue.
Tip 7: Recognise the mutual evaluation connection. Questions may describe a country receiving a poor rating despite good laws. The likely explanation is weak effectiveness under Immediate Outcome 1: the country does not adequately understand its risks or has not translated the NRA into coordinated action. A good NRA is also what allows a country to justify exemptions or simplified measures to assessors.
Tip 8: Watch for dissemination and update themes. Best-practice answers emphasise sharing NRA findings with the private sector and keeping the NRA current. An option describing an NRA that is kept entirely confidential or conducted once and never revisited reflects poor practice.
Tip 9: Do not confuse the different levels of risk assessment. Supranational (for example the EU SNRA), national, sectoral and institutional assessments each have a distinct owner and purpose. Read the question carefully to see which level is being tested.
Tip 10: Apply the CAMS 'best answer' discipline. Several options may be partly true. Choose the one that most completely reflects FATF principles: government-led, evidence-based, risk-focused, coordinated across agencies, shared with the private sector, used to allocate resources proportionately, and regularly updated. Eliminate options that are absolute, that shift the government's duty onto private institutions, or that treat the NRA as a one-off compliance formality.
5. Quick Revision Summary
• What: a government-led assessment of national ML/TF/PF threats, vulnerabilities and consequences.
• Why: to apply the risk-based approach, allocate resources and inform policy, supervision and private-sector compliance.
• Basis: FATF Recommendations 1 and 2; assessed under Immediate Outcome 1 in mutual evaluations.
• Who: competent authorities (FIU, supervisors, law enforcement, ministries) with private-sector consultation.
• How: scope, identify, analyse, evaluate, act, disseminate, update.
• FI duty: incorporate NRA findings into the enterprise-wide risk assessment, CDD/EDD, monitoring, training and governance, while still performing an independent institutional assessment.
• Exam trap: the NRA never replaces an institution's own risk assessment, and it is never conducted by FIs or by FATF.
A National Risk Assessment (NRA) is the foundation stone of the risk-based approach (RBA) that underpins the entire modern anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) framework. Before a country can decide where to deploy supervisors, investigators, legislation and enforcement resources, it needs an evidence-based understanding of where money laundering (ML), terrorist financing (TF) and, increasingly, proliferation financing (PF) risks actually sit. The NRA provides that understanding.
For the CAMS exam, NRAs matter because they connect several core syllabus themes: the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations, the RBA, national cooperation and coordination, mutual evaluations, and the risk assessment obligations of individual financial institutions (FIs) and designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs). A strong grasp of NRAs helps you answer questions across the Regulatory Regimes, Risk Assessments and Collaboration domain and beyond.
Key reasons NRAs are important:
• They allow governments to allocate scarce resources to the highest-risk areas rather than spreading effort evenly.
• They provide a shared national picture of threats, vulnerabilities and consequences that regulators, law enforcement, the financial intelligence unit (FIU) and the private sector can all use.
• They justify the application of enhanced measures to higher-risk sectors and, where risk is demonstrably low, simplified measures to lower-risk sectors.
• They are a prerequisite for a credible mutual evaluation result: FATF assessors examine whether a country understands its own risks before judging the effectiveness of everything else.
• They feed directly into the enterprise-wide risk assessments that FIs are required to perform, giving institutions authoritative input on country, sector, product and customer risk.
2. What a National Risk Assessment Is
An NRA is a structured, government-led exercise to identify, assess and understand the ML/TF (and often PF) risks facing a jurisdiction, and to document the findings so that policy, supervision, enforcement and private-sector compliance can be aligned to those risks.
The FATF basis
• FATF Recommendation 1 (Assessing risks and applying a risk-based approach) requires countries to identify, assess and understand their ML/TF risks, to designate an authority or mechanism to coordinate the response, and to apply resources and measures commensurate with the risks identified. Following amendments, R.1 also requires countries to identify and assess proliferation financing risks related to targeted financial sanctions.
• FATF Recommendation 2 (National cooperation and coordination) requires national AML/CFT policies informed by the risks identified, and effective coordination mechanisms among policymakers, the FIU, law enforcement, supervisors and other competent authorities.
• Immediate Outcome 1 of the FATF effectiveness methodology assesses whether ML/TF risks are understood and whether actions are coordinated domestically to combat them. A weak or outdated NRA is one of the most common reasons countries score poorly here.
• FATF published Guidance on National Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment (2013), which sets out principles rather than a mandatory method. Countries may use the World Bank NRA tool, the IMF model, or their own methodology.
The core concepts
FATF frames risk as a function of three elements:
• Threat: the persons, groups, objects or activities with the potential to cause harm, for example organised crime groups, corrupt officials, terrorist organisations, and the predicate offences generating criminal proceeds (drug trafficking, fraud, tax crime, corruption, human trafficking).
• Vulnerability: the weaknesses that can be exploited by the threat, such as gaps in legislation, weak supervision of a sector, cash intensity, anonymity features of products, porous borders, or weak beneficial ownership transparency.
• Consequence: the impact or harm that ML/TF would cause, including damage to the financial system, the economy, national security and society.
Risk is therefore the combination of threats and vulnerabilities, weighted by consequence. Students sometimes confuse threat and vulnerability: remember that a threat is the criminal actor or activity, while a vulnerability is the weakness in the system that lets the threat succeed.
Who conducts it
NRAs are conducted by national competent authorities, typically coordinated by the ministry of finance, ministry of justice, the FIU or a dedicated interagency committee. Participants usually include the FIU, law enforcement and prosecutors, financial and DNFBP supervisors, customs and tax authorities, intelligence services and, importantly, the private sector through consultation. FIs do not conduct the NRA, but they contribute data and perspectives and are expected to use the results.
Related assessments you should recognise
• Supranational Risk Assessment (SNRA): produced by the European Commission under the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives; member states must also conduct their own NRAs and take the SNRA into account.
• Sectoral risk assessments: deeper dives into specific sectors such as virtual asset service providers, legal persons and arrangements, non-profit organisations (NPOs) or real estate.
• Terrorist financing and proliferation financing risk assessments: often produced as separate documents, for example the United States issues a National Money Laundering Risk Assessment, a National Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment and a National Proliferation Financing Risk Assessment.
• Institutional (enterprise-wide) risk assessments: performed by individual FIs and DNFBPs; these are distinct from, but informed by, the NRA.
3. How a National Risk Assessment Works
Step 1: Scoping and governance
A lead agency or interagency committee is designated under R.2. The scope is defined, covering ML, TF and PF, the sectors to be analysed, the time period and the methodology to be used. Confidentiality arrangements are agreed because some inputs are sensitive intelligence.
Step 2: Identification
Authorities gather quantitative and qualitative information: suspicious transaction report (STR) statistics from the FIU, prosecution and confiscation data, supervisory findings, crime statistics, typology reports, international reports (FATF and FATF-style regional body evaluations, Egmont Group material), economic and demographic data, and private-sector input through surveys, workshops and interviews. The aim is to list the threats, the vulnerabilities and the channels through which illicit funds move.
Step 3: Analysis
Each identified threat and vulnerability is analysed for its nature, source, likelihood and potential consequences. Sectors (banking, money or value transfer services, casinos, real estate, dealers in precious metals and stones, lawyers, accountants, trust and company service providers, virtual asset service providers) are rated on inherent risk, the quality of mitigating controls and residual risk. Products, delivery channels, customer types and geographic exposure are assessed in a similar way.
Step 4: Evaluation and prioritisation
Findings are compared against the country's risk appetite and prioritised. Typical outputs include a ranking of the highest-risk predicate offences, the sectors most exposed, the TF threats relevant to the jurisdiction, and the main structural vulnerabilities such as beneficial ownership opacity or cash reliance.
Step 5: Action planning
Under R.1 and R.2, the NRA must lead to action. Countries normally publish an AML/CFT national strategy or action plan setting out legislative changes, supervisory priorities, resourcing decisions, outreach programmes and performance measures. Where risk is higher, enhanced measures are mandated; where risk is proven lower, simplified measures or exemptions may be permitted under strictly limited conditions.
Step 6: Dissemination
FATF expects countries to make NRA results available to competent authorities, self-regulatory bodies, FIs and DNFBPs. Most countries publish a public version while retaining a classified annex. Dissemination matters because the private sector cannot apply the RBA properly without knowing the national risk picture.
Step 7: Review and update
Risks evolve, so NRAs are living documents. FATF expects them to be kept up to date; many jurisdictions update every three to five years, with interim sectoral or thematic refreshes. New risks such as virtual assets, trade-based money laundering, sanctions evasion and cyber-enabled fraud have driven recent updates in many countries.
How FIs use the NRA
An FI's enterprise-wide risk assessment should explicitly reference the NRA (and any SNRA or sectoral assessments) when rating customer types, products, delivery channels and geographies. Compliance officers use NRA findings to calibrate customer due diligence (CDD) and enhanced due diligence (EDD), to tune transaction monitoring scenarios toward the predicate offences flagged as high risk, to design training and to brief senior management and the board. Regulators and examiners frequently ask institutions to demonstrate how NRA findings have been incorporated. Importantly, the NRA supplements but never replaces the FI's own risk assessment; an institution's specific customer base and business model may create risks the NRA does not emphasise.
Common NRA findings worth knowing
Across jurisdictions, NRAs repeatedly highlight: cash and cash-intensive businesses; money or value transfer services and informal remittance; real estate; legal persons, trusts and the professionals who create them; high-end dealers in luxury goods; casinos and gambling; correspondent banking; trade finance; and virtual assets. Frequently cited predicate threats include fraud, drug trafficking, tax evasion, corruption and foreign proceeds laundered through international financial centres. TF findings often focus on small-value self-funding, abuse of NPOs and cross-border cash movement.
4. Exam Tips: Answering Questions on National Risk Assessments
Tip 1: Anchor every answer in FATF Recommendation 1 and Immediate Outcome 1. If a question asks about the purpose or legal basis of an NRA, the best answer will reference the requirement to identify, assess and understand ML/TF (and PF) risks and to apply a risk-based approach. Recommendation 2 is the answer when the question emphasises coordination among domestic agencies.
Tip 2: Know who is responsible. The NRA is conducted by national competent authorities with private-sector consultation. Any option suggesting that individual banks, external auditors or FATF itself conduct a country's NRA is a distractor. FATF assesses whether a country has done it; it does not perform the assessment.
Tip 3: Remember that the NRA is an input, not a substitute. A classic exam distractor says an FI can rely on the NRA instead of performing its own enterprise-wide risk assessment. This is wrong. The correct position is that the FI must conduct its own assessment and incorporate NRA findings into it.
Tip 4: Distinguish threat, vulnerability and consequence. If a scenario describes an organised crime group laundering drug proceeds, that is a threat. If it describes weak supervision of money service businesses or lax beneficial ownership rules, that is a vulnerability. If it describes damage to the integrity of the financial system, that is a consequence.
Tip 5: Link the NRA to resource allocation and proportionality. When a question asks what a country should do with NRA results, look for the answer that applies enhanced measures to higher-risk areas and permits simplified measures only where lower risk has been demonstrated, and that allocates supervisory and enforcement resources accordingly. Answers that apply identical controls everywhere ignore the RBA and are usually incorrect.
Tip 6: Expect scenario questions about a compliance officer's response. If a newly published NRA rates a sector or product your institution serves as high risk, the best answer typically involves updating the institutional risk assessment, adjusting CDD/EDD and monitoring, reporting to senior management and the board, and updating training. Avoid answers that involve immediately exiting all affected customers without analysis, or ignoring the NRA because the institution has never had an issue.
Tip 7: Recognise the mutual evaluation connection. Questions may describe a country receiving a poor rating despite good laws. The likely explanation is weak effectiveness under Immediate Outcome 1: the country does not adequately understand its risks or has not translated the NRA into coordinated action. A good NRA is also what allows a country to justify exemptions or simplified measures to assessors.
Tip 8: Watch for dissemination and update themes. Best-practice answers emphasise sharing NRA findings with the private sector and keeping the NRA current. An option describing an NRA that is kept entirely confidential or conducted once and never revisited reflects poor practice.
Tip 9: Do not confuse the different levels of risk assessment. Supranational (for example the EU SNRA), national, sectoral and institutional assessments each have a distinct owner and purpose. Read the question carefully to see which level is being tested.
Tip 10: Apply the CAMS 'best answer' discipline. Several options may be partly true. Choose the one that most completely reflects FATF principles: government-led, evidence-based, risk-focused, coordinated across agencies, shared with the private sector, used to allocate resources proportionately, and regularly updated. Eliminate options that are absolute, that shift the government's duty onto private institutions, or that treat the NRA as a one-off compliance formality.
5. Quick Revision Summary
• What: a government-led assessment of national ML/TF/PF threats, vulnerabilities and consequences.
• Why: to apply the risk-based approach, allocate resources and inform policy, supervision and private-sector compliance.
• Basis: FATF Recommendations 1 and 2; assessed under Immediate Outcome 1 in mutual evaluations.
• Who: competent authorities (FIU, supervisors, law enforcement, ministries) with private-sector consultation.
• How: scope, identify, analyse, evaluate, act, disseminate, update.
• FI duty: incorporate NRA findings into the enterprise-wide risk assessment, CDD/EDD, monitoring, training and governance, while still performing an independent institutional assessment.
• Exam trap: the NRA never replaces an institution's own risk assessment, and it is never conducted by FIs or by FATF.
Test mode:
CAMS - National Risk Assessments Example Questions
Test your knowledge of National Risk Assessments
Question 1
Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of a national risk assessment in the anti-financial crime framework?
Question 2
A newly published national risk assessment finds that proceeds of domestic corruption are often laundered through high-value property purchases. These purchases are funded through accounts of legal entities formed by trust and company service providers (TCSPs). The bank's MLRO confirms that the bank serves many such entities. Its transaction monitoring scenarios were last calibrated before the assessment was published. What is the MOST appropriate next step for the MLRO?
Question 3
A national risk assessment concludes that a category of low-value, reloadable prepaid products presents lower money laundering and terrorist financing risk, and the supervisor confirms that simplified due diligence may be used for it. The head of KYC at a payment service provider offering such a product asks how the firm should respond. Which approach is MOST appropriate?
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19 questions (total)
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