ACFCS Webinar SeriesJune 10th, 2015

How to Break Into Financial Crime Compliance

Tips and tactics for launching a career and thriving in AML, sanctions,

corruption and other compliance roles

Brian KindleExecutive Director

ACFCS

Certification, News, Guidance, Training,

Networking

CFCS Certification

The Credential That Demonstrates Competency and Skill Across the Financial Crime Spectrum

Brian MonroeContent & Business Development

Manager

ACFCS

Webinar Overview:

• This session will cover:

• What financial institutions look for in terms of entry level positions, and how to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack

• Overcoming the experience hurdle – how to get that first position when every job seems to require prior experience

• What is available in terms of mid and senior positions, and how to convince institutions you’re the right fit

• The mix of skills required to truly succeed: an alchemy of knowing the basics, understanding emerging criminal trends, a grounding in math and models, and being a compliance diplomat

• What areas are hot now in compliance, and why

Presenters for today’s webinar

• Sonia Desai, Senior Vice President, BSA/OFAC Director of Operations, Bank of the West

• Jack Kelly, Managing Director and Co-Founder of The Compliance Search Group

• Arnie Scher, CEO and President of Jade Information Systems; former VP and compliance manager at JPMorgan Chase

Panelist bios

• Sonia Desai, Senior Vice President, BSA/OFAC Director of Operations, Bank of the West

• Sonia joined BOTW in September of this year after she returned to the USA from Sydney, Australia where she was an Executive Manager at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. She was responsible for writing policy, developing the program and overseeing the operations for anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism finance, sanctions screening, anti-bribery and corruption, and international security. Previously, she worked in the Financial Investigations Unit at Wells Fargo in San Francisco; before that, she was a Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State in Washington, DC, where she worked with various governmental agencies to write and manage the sanctions and terrorist designation programs.

Panelist bios

• Jack Kelly, managing director and co-founder of the Compliance Search Group

• Jack’s company recruits and places professionals nationwide in the compliance, legal and regulatory professions. His site, www.compliancejobs.com, is a key posting site for compliance, legal regulatory, risk and audit professionals. He is also the founder and publisher of The Compliance Exchange newsletter and blog, which is emailed daily to more than 50,000 professionals daily. He has been in the recruiting field for more than a dozen years and placed some 1,000 individuals in key positions at banks and a broad array of institutions subject to anti-money laundering and other key financial crime compliance and control functions.

Panelist bios

• Arnie Scher, CEO and President of Jade Information Systems; Former VP and compliance manager at JPMorgan Chase

• Arnie’s experience in the field of financial crime is both broad and deep, covering some of the most complex issues related to anti-money laundering, sanctions and the systems and technologies that weave through these programs. He has defined, designed and developed programs along the full compliance life-cycle. He has been a director at BDO Consulting, leading the domestic compliance technology practice, including key remediation projects, and is a former vice president and compliance manager for JPMorgan Chase, where he created a global AML system covering all lines of business.

Sonia DesaiSVP, BSA/OFAC Director of Operations

Bank of the West – BNP Paribas Group

Jack KellyManaging Director and Co-Founder

Compliance Search Group

Arnie ScherCEO and President

Jade Information Systems

Background on the hot compliance job market• Things looked bleak in the midst of the economic

downturn for compliance staff, but that has turned around in recent years.

• That has happened through a combination of international pressure from groups like the Financial Action Task Force, which sets the global AML agenda, and a greater global focus on transparency, risk and the need for strong financial crime laws and beneficial ownership information among governments and regulatory agencies in multiple countries

Background on the hot job market

• Domestically, US federal and state regulators and the nation’s financial intelligence unit, has upped the pressure and penalties against financial institutions for program failures.

• This has resulted, in recent years, in historic penalties for AML, sanctions and fraud failures reaching into the billions of dollars and as part of the enforcement actions, institutions had to engage in costly and resource-intensive remediation projects.

• That has pushed the demand for financial crime professionals across the spectrum, with some large banks hiring in the thousands and salaries moving into the six figures or more depending on level of experience.

Hot financial crime job areas

• Math, models and more: Examiners have starting digging much deeper into the complex modeling and validation procedures of banks. These would include the complex algorithms in risk assessments, transaction monitoring and other areas. So individuals who understand anti-money laundering, but also have a background in mathematics, risk modeling and validation procedures are even more in demand.

Hot financial crime job areas

• Transaction alert analysts: Even with the best systems to detect and prevent money laundering and tuned to spit out high quality alerts, it’s still human beings that have to look at that information, look at the context and other data points and decide if there is the threshold of a potential financial crime has been reached to file a suspicious activity report, or SAR.

Hot financial crime job areas

• Cybersecurity: Due to increased regulatory pressure, law enforcement fears and major successful hacker attacks against household name banks and retailers, financial institutions are also bolstering staff in the areas of cybersecurity, such as looking for qualified chief security officers and IT professionals familiar with bank systems, hacker attack vectors and financial crime.

Bank financial crime program structures• Customer onboarding: this would be where banks engage in

customer due diligence or know-your-customer procedures. These are often the more junior positions and involve customer risk ranking based on the types of products, regions, industries and political ranks. They are at the forefront of the financial crime program.

• Alerts and sanctions monitoring: Banks also need legions of analysts to respond to and make decisions about alerts generated by transaction monitoring and sanctions monitoring systems to ensure aberrant behavior is not a criminal or not tied to designated entity or region.

Bank financial crime program structures• Investigations and SAR filing: These are typically the

more senior officials who must take the disparate data and investigations, do a more thorough investigation and analysis and file the SARs or explain why they didn’t.

• Converged programs: Many large domestic and international institutions are exploring how to have a converged financial crime program, where AML, sanctions, fraud and cybersecurity are cross-trained in each other’s specialties and try to respond to threats in a more efficient and coordinated manner.