Why does CVS health have an anti-money laundering program?
Under the USA Patriot Act, financial institutions, including insurance companies, are required to have an anti-money laundering (AML) program. This is to prevent fraud, money laundering, and other illegal activities.
The Anti-Money Laundering Program protects CVS stores and the customer transaction data they provide to the company from being used for fraudulent purposes or being stolen by criminals.
AML is a complex and important issue, as it is critical to the integrity of our country’s financial system. To help ensure that transactions are carried out securely, our AML department reviews and analyzes the risk of fraudulent activity, and takes appropriate action to prevent and mitigate these risks.
Our AML team is led by Cristen Hall, Director of the AML Compliance Department at CVS Health, who brings more than 10 years of legal and financial crimes compliance experience to the AML team. She oversees transaction monitoring, sanctions screening and risk assessment teams to ensure that all retail transactions are conducted in a secure and compliant manner.
In the case of pharmaceuticals, this can involve fraudulently removing medications from approved “formulary” lists, or denying formulary exception requests for a variety of drugs that are cheaper, generic versions of brand medicines that are prescribed to patients. It also can include manipulating inventory at the pharmacy to limit access to lower-cost generic versions of medications that are often needed by patients to treat medical conditions such as hepatitis C or asthma.