Anti-Money Laundering and Profiling Squads​

SITUATION​

Our client was building a center of excellence for preventing financial crimes and needed project management professionals with industry specific knowledge like Office of Foreign Asset Control, sanctions, and anti-money laundering (AML) and technical experts with niche skillsets. This need outpaced their HR and recruiting capabilities. Our client’s centers were in cities which were not traditional finance hubs with populations lacking this industry specific knowledge. Our client also planned to scale up this center of excellence, creating a need for long-term support. Additionally, they needed the technical expertise to fit together the components of business systems analysis (BSA) and AML practices to effectively and efficiently comply with AML laws, rules, and regulations globally, detect financial crime, and manage money laundering risks. The key challenges the client was facing included:​

• An absence of firm-wide data capabilities to enable globally-consistent functions like compliance​

• Siloed systems impacting data flow, reporting, and workflow integration with a reliance on manual processes​

• Inefficient governance processes and responsibility delineation between first-and second-lines of defense​

• A lack of prioritization and highly conservative approach obscures focus on real risk​

We assembled a fit-for-purpose team of qualified professionals including an Actimize lead developer, two Actimize developers, a program manager, two business analysts, a java developer, and a scrum master, all with financial compliance or financial crime prevention experience. Apex’s national reach and delivery capacity were instrumental in building the team, including leveraging remote consultants. Once we found business professionals with the requisite experience, we provided Agile training to help them function in an IT environment. The team undertook sprint planning, execution, and progress reporting based on the product backlog and prioritization provided by the client. Based on the client’s prioritization, they analyzed, designed, and developed or updated applications. This included application configuration and setup, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. They successfully automated application testing and integration testing. The team ensured all new applications and modules were built in compliance with modern development practices and the client approved tool-chain.​

RESULTS ​

We assisted our client in standing up their AML center of excellence with qualified professionals in niche skillsets willing to relocate to our client’s strategic locations. Our team transformed our client’s BSA/AML program to effectively and efficiently comply with AML laws, rules, and regulations globally, detect financial crime, and manage money laundering risks. Due to our success in this program, the client has asked us to continue the project to assist with training additional employees, laying the foundation for ongoing support.​