The financial crime risk assessment is designed to assist a business to determine the financial crime risks such as money laundering/terrorism financing, fraud, sanctions breaches and bribery that it faces. It forms the basis of an effective compliance programme by helping companies identify their risks before determining which controls are appropriate. Together with Icon.Partners, let's explore how this process works and what regulators generally expect from it. What Is a

What Is Fiscal Domicile? Fiscal domicile is the country a tax authority treats as a business's home – the place that taxes its income, domestic and foreign. It isn't the same as a legal address. A company can hold an office in Poland, sit registered in Lithuania, and run its business from Romania. Tax domicile follows the country of actual control. That country taxes the income. Fiscal domicile meaning for a company Fiscal domicile meaning matters for practical reasons: it fi

Starting a bank in the United States is very different from forming an ordinary company. A banking institution must satisfy regulators that its owners, management, capital, business model and compliance framework are strong enough to operate safely. For founders researching how to start a bank, one of the main routes is a national bank charter issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). In August 2026, the OCC reported 40 de novo applications during the pre

A decade of frozen applications has given way to something new in American finance. Officials who once guarded the entry gate tightly are opening it wider. Anyone digging into how to start a bank still faces months of paperwork, fundraising, and back-and-forth with examiners, but the mood in Washington has shifted. What changed, and what hasn't, is worth understanding before a dollar goes toward an application. Why Bank Chartering Is Changing in 2026 Supervisory habits rarely

Anyone setting up a payments, remittance, or exchange business eventually runs into the same question: what is a money service business, and does my company actually count as one? What Is a Money Services Business (MSB)? The short answer is that an MSB is any company handling money on behalf of someone else - sending it, exchanging it, or storing it - without being a bank. Below, we look at what is an MSB on paper and how the term is actually used in day-to-day banking langua