What is a career in compliance like? - YouTube

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Well, I'm currently a compliance in AML manager and I'm an acting MLRO

for the company I'm working for, so that does entail quite a bit of

responsibility, obviously from a compliance side from anti money

laundering financial crime reporting, so I have quite busy days nowadays, yeah.

It happened to me recently but I'm enjoying it.

Well at the beginning I actually started working in, say, financial crime

prevention, I fell into that absolutely by chance because my degree was

originally, I have a Master's in linguistics and cross-cultural

communication,which have nothing to do with compliance. And I started working

for an online retailing company and obviously fraud was a big part of that

and it got me very interested in the field of how you can detect and prevent,

in future, potential fraud cases that you might have within a company. So I started

with that and later on moved into more financial crime and on to money laundering

and finally reached financial services about four years ago now and

predominantly doing compliance and sometimes money laundering so altogether it's

probably about seven years

Well, to be frank I enjoy the fact that, and I'm sure you heard this before, every

day is very different and because I'm involved in all three parts of the

industry, each one of them is evolving on a regular basis so you have absolutely

fascinating cases, what you have to deal with daily and on the board I like to be

challenged then this is exactly what I'm getting with compliance.

It's an interesting question because I do hold a lot of interviews nowadays to

recruit into my teams and I think the main thing I'm looking for is not a

skill as such but you have to have common sense. You have to be able to perceive,

understand and interpret the situation on a spot, very quickly and very

precisely and this is exactly what you need to do so it's problem solving, it's

managing your time you have to be very organised in the amount of things that

you have to deal with on a daily basis, so multitasking is vital and finally

diplomacy. You have to be diplomatic because you're dealing with internal

stakeholders, with external stakeholders, sometimes with clients and the news that

you're bringing sometimes is not the best and not the most pleasant to hear

yet, you need to present them in a way that everyone is comfortable with the

situation, you can move on with your job.

Technical knowledge does bring a lot to the table so if I have someone across me

who has mentioned recent developments and regulations, and though it's

not to the tee and they might not necessarily understand to the detail

what exactly they're discussing at the time, but it does help so you have to keep

abreast of what is happening and you have to research theory quite a lot.

In addition, that will help the candidate themselves to understand whether they

actually want to be in that field because there is a mixture of understanding that

compliance is pretty much legal work whereas in effect it is not, so you have

to understand what you're getting yourself into as much as that would help

you during interview process definitely. Work experience helps a lot, yes you can

get as much as you can from theoretical base, but without your understanding of

how that is going to interpret and translate into the company, that is going to

be quite hard. So any experience you can get, definitely go for it and even if

you're in the role that you might think has nothing to do with compliance or

anti money laundering or anything along those lines you will come to a point in your career

where this information is going to be useful so even if you're working the

cashier on the till, you will know how to handle cash, what can happen with a card

and in future if you're ever moving into financial crime prevention that

experience is going to help you. So even if you're in a junior role elsewhere you

ask questions, come to a manager and get as much information as you can. This is

always the best way to learn.

Well I myself have done quite a few by now and I would say once you have a qualification

on your CV, yes that absolutely does help and it gives an understanding to

the recruiter, and to the employee, that you know what you are going to be

doing in your future career. You might not have, obviously practical experience

of how that is going implement within the company but you have a theoretical base

and obviously with experience, that will come.

It is a developing market definitely and I can see a lot of demand for

individuals who do have qualifications, who do have experience, so it's

definitely a highly valued industry at the moment, and with the recent

developments in regulation, whether it is EU or whether it is US which is influencing

the whole world, you will only grow. A lot of resource at the moment in any company

is spent in compliance and compliance is predominantly individuals, so this is

your knowledge this is your education exactly you going to bring into the

company so absolutely stepping into compliance is a good way forward.