CIO Bulletin

SightSpan – Leveraging Security Solutions and Program Management for the Financial Services and Fintech Industries

SightSpan is a full service consulting firm that combines senior level business management consulting services with technical expertise. The company’s goal is to assist each and every one of its customers in meeting their goals and objectives. SightSpan is bridging the gap between business and technology every day. The firm provides expertise across technical and business aspects in financial services, manufacturing and government sectors.

Financial Innovators worldwide put their trust in and do business with SightSpan for multiple reasons, including the culture of excellence and its understanding of the balance between corp growth, client acquisition, and risk management. Its reputation in the global marketplace is excellent. The company isproud to partner with some of the best and brightest people in the financial services industry, some clients for almost fourteen years since the firm was founded. The SightSpan group is essentially an extension of your team, and the company works and care about everyone it works with, from the largest banks to the most prominent payment firms in the world to the high-energy newly formed Fintechs and Crypto firms. SightSpan, a firm you know, people you trust, and the expertise you can count on.

Q. Why SightSpan?

SightSpan is a boutique advisory group with local and international expertise focused on risk management and security matters. SightSpan offers risk management advisory services to financial services firms, including banks, brokers, MSBs, payments and prepaid card services groups, governments and organizations in need of short term, on demand, compliance and security expertise.

Some of the largest financial institutions in the world rely on SightSpan experts and solutions to mitigate compliance risk and uncover financial crime around the globe. SightSpan also assists governments in keeping people safe in dangerous or higher risk situations, deals with threat financing, money laundering and general illicit financial activities and designs communications and training programs to better assist citizens.

The SightSpan team is focused on its core set of services and expertise to provide the most value for each individual client. The firm has clear policies and repeatable methodologies to complete projects in a timely manner, with the focus always remaining on client goals, trust, effective communications and success.

Safeguard Your Business Today

Business Support

SightSpan has a team of highly experienced experts, ready to work for your organization remotely. They can work on a retainer basis or on demand for special projects. The SightSpan Payments group partners with Fintechs, Payment Firms, Crypto/FX, and Banks as an extension of their AML Compliance and Operations departments. The SightSpan team will identify and define critical programs, policies, and procedures for the proposed product/service offerings in alignment with industry best practices and any regulatory or contractual requirements. SightSpan supports their Clients with the implementation and management of critical partners, including but not limited to: Processors, Banks, Networks, CIP Vendors, etc. SightSpan’s team serves as hands-on analysts, resolving escalations, grounding, and driving improvement projects to launch new programs and improve customer experiences.

Vendor Selection: The SightSpan Vendor Selection planning process is customized to the individual organization or agency. A custom Request for Proposal (RFP) will be drafted to detail the buyer’s requirements, to solicit proposals, and to detail how the mathematical modeling used by the team will evaluate and negotiate a future contract. The process is broken down into five phases of work: Pre-solicitation Planning, Vendor Selection, Award Contract, Contract Management, and Contract Closure.

Threat Management

The security of any company or of individuals and their families depends on the thoroughness of a Threat Assessment. It is the services of a security risk management consultant company that can make the difference when conducting an assessment, to include an in-depth review of all business and family activities, regional, political and religious risks, movement and logistics arrangements. SightSpan Security will continuously monitor identified risks and threats and implement corrective or preventative measures to on-going plans as deemed necessary to counter identified changes and challenges.

Crisis Response Planning: Within the context of the threat assessment, be it that of an organization, individual(s) including that of their families, their company will plan for unfavorable conditions, and take steps to pre-empt those conditions arising, or to have in place effective contingency procedures to minimize their risk impact.

This will include the extraction and safe passage to safe havens. Medical extractions and the important need of informing all registered people who need to know the status of individuals during and after their extraction where possible.

Crisis Plan Review and Audit: Once a Crisis Response Plan is defined and implemented organizations often believe that no further efforts are required. However, as your organization changes and as time passes, it is crucial to periodically have your plan reviewed in order to make any updates or adjustments that will align to the new organizational structure. SightSpan Security will review your organization’s Mitigation and Prevention controls, level of Preparedness, Response measures and Recovery program. After a thorough review, recommendations will be made that will assist your organization ensure that all aspects of your crisis plan are both sound and realistic.

John F. Walsh | Chief Executive Officer

John Walsh has been the President and CEO of SightSpan Inc. since 2007. John is a highly regarded entrepreneur and strategist with 30 years of experience in the financial services industry providing expertise in risk management, predictive intelligence analysis, collective intelligence, crisis communications and security services. He helps organizations simplify approaches to complex solutions to manage risk, security, anti-money laundering (AML), combating terrorist financing (CTF) and corporate security. Prior to joining SightSpan, John held leadership positions within the financial services industry including roles at Wachovia Bank, where he was the CIB Data Czar responsible for information management and corporate governance, Bank of America in the role of Global AML Technology and Process Executive and Merrill Lynch where he led the Wholesale Trading Initiatives and GMI.