David Leppan is the founder and Chairman of World-Check, a UK based company which provides structured risk intelligence to clients in 162 countries. Founded in late 2000, World-Check was originally established to meet the Swiss financial industry's Know Your Customer (KYC) and risk-reduction requirements. Today World-Check's global database of heightened risk individuals and business entities is relied upon by more than 3000 institutions, including 47 of the world's 50 largest financial institutions and more than 200 regulatory and enforcement agencies. Clients include institutions from the insurance, legal, gaming, aviation, real estate, consultancy, natural resources and accounting sectors to name but a few.
 
David's pioneering role, and deep understanding of the key compliance issues facing regulated industries has helped to establish World-Check as the industry standard in the provision of risk intelligence. He has an in-depth operational knowledge of the compliance challenge and a close working relationship with regulatory entities, compliance officers and enforcement agencies worldwide. Consequently, David is frequently invited to share his expertise at international conferences and seminars, and encourages the financial industry to embrace its social responsibility, whilst emphasizing the importance of open source information gathering. Regarded as an expert on these fields David has written numerous articles and white-papers from both a regulatory and commercial perspective, and is often quoted in leading international newspapers and financial publications.

“Global security in the 21st century hinges on our abilities to detect and disrupt the transfer of illicit funds to organized crime syndicates and terrorist networks. As a result intensive and sustained financial information gathering has the potential to significantly weaken these groups’ operations by identifying and thereby reducing the financial infrastructure required to sustain their criminal goals.” said David Leppan.  “My aim, when addressing conferences, is to raise the financial community’s level of awareness of not only the financial, regulatory and reputation risks associated with doing business with heightened risk individuals and entities, but to also make them aware of their responsibility to protect society as a whole by willingly cooperating in the fight against financial crime.”

The World-Check database is updated daily in real-time by an international research team, and is derived from hundreds of thousands of public sources. These multi-lingual online research specialists collect open-source information in 35 different languages including Arabic, Tajik, Russian, Tamil, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Bahasa. This information is correlated into highly structured profiles on terrorists, money launderers, fraudsters, narcotics traffickers, shell banks, PEPs, organised crime, sanctioned entities, plus many other categories that pose a lesser risk but are equally of interest. Profiles are then linked revealing relationship networks between family members, middlemen and associates - where the real risk often lies. The database and tools find direct application in financial compliance, anti-money laundering (AML), KYC, PEP screening, enhanced due diligence (EDD), fraud prevention, government intelligence, Counter Terrorist Funding (CTF) solutions and other identity authentication, background screening and risk-prevention practices.

“We are extremely excited about our exceptional growth in such a short period of time, and are committed to continually investing in innovative solutions, research specialists and value-added services based on client needs” said David Leppan, “World-Check has played a critical role as the industry leader in the AML, KYC and CTF fields, and our continued client and partner growth confirms that we continue to lead the market."

In addition to speaking at numerous financial crime conferences, David is proud to host World-Check’s Annual Compliance Leadership Forum. Currently in its fourth year of existence, the event brings together the world’s leading professionals from the financial, legal, enforcement and regulatory sectors to identify common compliance concerns and emerging challenges. The two-day event is by invitation only, and is organised to encourage cross-border cooperation within the industry and between the industry and enforcement agencies. To read more about the forum visit the website at www.complianceleadershipforum.com
 
A British national, David attended University in Austria where he studied Politics and International Law. He speaks English, Spanish and German. Prior to founding World-Check he worked for a division of  Thomson Financial in an area related to OFAC solutions.