Correspondent banking de-risking has been a persistent challenge for Caribbean financial institutions for over a decade, and the pressure has intensified again as global banks continue rationalising their networks in response to rising compliance costs and a more complex sanctions environment. Small national banking sectors, credit unions, and money service businesses are typically the first relationships reviewed when a correspondent bank consolidates — and the institutions that retain relationships are consistently the ones that can produce current, independently verified evidence of a functioning AML/CFT programme.
At the same time, CFATF mutual evaluations continue to shape supervisory expectations across the region, and grey-list status in any one jurisdiction can affect how correspondent banks assess an entire regional relationship. Building — and being able to demonstrate — a robust, jurisdiction-appropriate AML/CFT programme is no longer optional groundwork. It is the primary lever institutions in the region have to protect access to the global financial system.