Practical AML Skills: Detection, Investigation and Suspicious Activity Reporting

Course objectives

• Explain the fundamental principles of AML and financial crime prevention and identify common laundering typologies
• Apply practical risk assessment techniques across customer, geographic, product and transaction risk
• Review and investigate transaction monitoring alerts and distinguish unusual activity from potentially suspicious activity
• Structure an AML investigation, gather and assess evidence and build a clear transaction and investigative timeline
• Apply source of funds and source of wealth analysis and identify gaps and inconsistencies in customer information
• Make appropriate escalation decisions and prepare effective internal unusual activity reports
• Draft a clear and informative suspicious activity report narrative and maintain proper records and audit trails

Who should attend

• AML officers, analysts and investigators
• Compliance officers, compliance analysts and regulatory compliance professionals
• Transaction monitoring, financial crime and KYC analysts
• Customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence professionals
• Risk officers, risk analysts, fraud investigators and internal auditors
• Professionals moving into AML and financial crime roles

Course outline

1. 01Session 1: AML fundamentals, the three stages of laundering, the three lines of defence and the role of the AML professional
2. 02Session 1: customer risk assessment across geographic, product, delivery channel, politically exposed person and sanctions risk
3. 03Session 1: know your customer, customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence skills
4. 04Session 1: red flags and laundering typologies, from structuring and smurfing to pass through and dormant accounts
5. 05Session 2: transaction monitoring, alert generation, false positives, alert fatigue and alert disposition
6. 06Session 2: practical investigation skills, following the money trail, identifying connected parties and evaluating explanations
7. 07Session 2: decision making and escalation, reasonable suspicion, and whether to close, escalate or report
8. 08Session 2: suspicious activity reporting requirements and drafting an effective report narrative
9. 09Session 2: documentation, audit trails, quality assurance and communicating findings to regulators and law enforcement
10. 10Session 2: technology and artificial intelligence in AML, behavioural analytics, explainability and human oversight

Scheduled sessions