Less than five months after facing charges for having in place poor anti-money laundering controls, global banking giant HSBC announced that it has appointed Robert Werner to the newly-created role as head of group financial crime compliance, and group money-laundering reporting officer.

Following a year-long investigation, a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 330-page report in July charging HSBC and its U.S. affiliate with exposing the U.S. financial system to what Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) called “a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money laundering (AML) controls.”

“HSBC's compliance culture has been pervasively polluted for a long time,” Levin said during the hearing. “Its recent change in leadership says it's committed to cleaning house. That commitment is welcome surely, but it will take more than words for the bank to change course."

HSBC said the new role held by Werner follows a compliance restructure, which separates financial crime compliance from other areas of compliance. Werner will be responsible for developing HSBC's global strategy, standards, systems and policies in areas such as anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, proliferation funding, anti-bribery and sanctions. He also will have global responsibility for their implementation and operations.

Werner also will oversee global financial crime compliance assurance by working with regional and local assurance teams to ensure consistent and effective application of, and adherence to, global financial crime standards, policies and procedures across the group. He will work with Security & Fraud Risk to establish a Global Financial Intelligence Unit to work with the business financial intelligence units, creating the capacity to conduct sensitive in-house investigations into potential regulatory breaches.

Since joining HSBC in August as head of global standards assurance, Werner has brought to HSBC a wealth of experience from both global financial institutions and the U.S. government. He has worked at the Department of Justice and also served in the Treasury Department in various senior roles, including heading the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. More recently, he has worked at senior levels at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch in compliance enforcement and business intelligence.

Werner will report to Marc Moses, group chief risk officer, with continued accountability to Chief Legal Officer Stuart Levey in relation to the policy surrounding global standards and the conduct of certain internal investigations. Werner becomes a group general manager and one of about 40 senior executives responsible for the strategic direction and day-to-day operations of HSBC's global network.

The company said it plans to make an announcement on the leadership of the non-financial crime responsibilities in the near future.