Back to school – professional training

No official global body exists to help assess the quantity and quality of anti-money laundering schools, colleges and consultants throughout the world, writes Alan Osborn, but the number must certainly run into the thousands - and by far the majority are in the US. Unsophisticated laundering may leave clear tell-tale signs, which can be quickly picked up by automatic monitoring systems, but profit-oriented criminals and terrorist financiers have become more adept at hiding their trails in recent years and more is demanded of those who combat them. How far can successful AML techniques be taught? Who does the teaching, and where?

US independents and in-house

“Many of the professionals in this field have backgrounds in financial law, criminal law enforcement or have come up through the banking ranks,” said Steve Hudak, chief of public affairs at the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the American government’s multi-source financial intelligence and analysis network. “There’s no standard certification for the training for US anti-money laundering and compliance professionals. The federal government has no role in it currently. The industry has developed best practices and training programmes on their own. At FinCEN our interest is making sure that the risks are addressed, that financial institutions assess their own risk and take appropriate measures and come up with a proper AML programme. We’re not very prescriptive on exactly how they do this,” he said.