NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Top global financial leaders said on Wednesday that curbing "terrorist finance" and money laundering are top priorities as they unveiled proposals to better coordinate international regulation of their industry.
"This is the first time that the global financial industry has developed and put forward a set of guiding principles to frame our relations with regulators," said William B. Harrison Jr., outgoing chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile , Research)
Harrison and Peter Wuffli, group chief executive of UBS AG, are overseeing the initiative unveiled by the Institute of International Finance Inc., which includes more than 360 global financial institutions.
One of IIF's chief goals is to improve the international regulatory process on a sustained basis. The group recently formed a special committee, for example, to address how to counter money laundering and terrorist finance activity.
Regulatory reaction to these crimes has resulted in a host of detailed requirements that are not producing results in an efficient manner, IIF leaders said at press conference in Manhattan.
The dialogue for effective regulation released by the IIF said, for example, that regulators have become "exceptionally confrontational" when it comes to combating money laundering.
"U.S. enforcement officials often seem to adopt a zero-tolerance attitude toward failure, even when examinations have previously found banks' procedures to be sound," the IIF said in its report.
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