Senior Financial Crime (KYC QC, FinTech)
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An experienced KYC/AML professional specialising in the onboarding, periodic review and quality assurance of corporate, institutional and HNW/UHNW clients, with extensive experience operating across both First Line of Defence (1LoD) and Second Line of Defence (2LoD) functions. Possesses deep expertise in handling complex legal structures, including trusts, SPVs, funds and offshore entities. Proven ability to map intricate ownership chains, identify UBOs and develop robust source of wealth narratives supported by comprehensive documentation.
Strong track record of mitigating AML and reputational risk through thorough enhanced due diligence (EDD), including PEP, sanctions and adverse media screening. Experienced in the optimisation and enhancement of financial crime technology and control frameworks including fine tuning, calibration, threshold optimisation, ATL/BTL testing, model validation, scenario development, rule rationalisation and false-positive reduction across screening and transaction monitoring environments. Skilled in assessing detection effectiveness, refining monitoring scenarios, improving alert quality and balancing risk sensitivity with operational efficiency to strengthen AML control effectiveness.
Confident in challenging opaque structures, escalating concerns where appropriate and ensuring full transparency in line with UK and international anti-money laundering regulations and regulatory expectations across jurisdictions including the USA, EU, GCC, BVI, Cayman Islands, Jersey and Guernsey. Demonstrated expertise in conducting detailed quality assurance and quality control assessments within both 1LoD and 2LoD frameworks, identifying control weaknesses, testing adherence to policies and procedures, driving continuous improvement initiatives and delivering constructive feedback to enhance investigation quality and consistency. Recognised for combining technical expertise, analytical rigour and risk-based decision-making with a strong quality-focused mindset to strengthen regulatory compliance, improve operational effectiveness and support a robust financial crime control environment.
Senior Financial Crime (KYC QC, FinTech) at Square 4 Partners FinCrime Project (2026-05 – 2026-09)
My current role is with Capital on Tap managed by Square 4 Partners as a KYC Quality Control/Assurance. Responsible for conducting independent and robust audits of transaction monitoring, KYC/KYB, CDD and EDD files completed by analysts to ensure compliance with UK and global KYC/FinCrime regulatory requirements (AML/CTF, Sanctions, ABC &
• Tax Evasion). Provide feedback on areas of development to strengthen knowledge on policy, processes and procedures and ensuring delivery of KPIs and team SLA's. Files are both onboarding of new clients as well as periodic review of existing ones, working in a highly pressurised target-driven environment. Conduct daily quality checks on 20+ KYC Analysts (both attaining and maintaining accreditation) improving approval rates and reducing QA errors by 40%. Engage with analysts to provide 1-2-1 constructive feedback (both face-to-face and virtually) to identify control weaknesses and drive improvements in review quality and consistency. Conduct QC reviews on ongoing due diligence and Know Your Business (KYB) refresh activities, ensuring client records remain accurate, complete and compliant with regulatory obligations. Capital on Tap client base are small and medium sized enterprises, however, there are also corporations, so the typical entity types are Private Limited Companies (Ltd), Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP) &
• Limited Liability Companies (LLC) to name but a few. This then leads to the audit of complex beneficial ownership structures specifically checking whether analysts have conducted the correct due diligence for each layer that involves SPVs, trusts, funds, offshore entities and HNW/UHNW individuals across multiple jurisdictions, ensuring drill-down to the natural person Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) and Persons with Significant Control (PSCs) being correctly identified and recorded. Furthermore, I review real-time and retrospective transaction monitoring alerts involving SME, corporate and high-risk clients across UK and US portfolios: check whether unusual transaction patterns, behavioural anomalies and potential financial crime indicators have been appropriately identified, investigated, documented and escalated where necessary. Quality check ID&V, sanctions &
• PEP screening, adverse media checks &
• EDD reviews for high-risk clients. Evaluate the sufficiency and reliability of source documentation, challenge findings where appropriate and ensure risk-based decisions are fully supported and documented. Assess clients' nature of business and ongoing activities to determine alignment with the firm's risk appetite and regulatory expectations. Produce detailed QA reports including thematic reviews on monthly fail trends and present these to stakeholders plus root cause analysis to support continuous improvement initiatives. Collaborate closely with Compliance, Financial Crime, Operations and Risk teams to identify emerging risks, enhance review methodologies, strengthen controls and improve overall quality standards across the KYC and Financial Crime function.
Senior Financial Crime (Complex/High Risk, EDD) at Aston Carter FinCrime Projects (rebranded TEKsystems) (2021-03 – 2025-08)
Senior financial crime roles for various banking clients (Handelsbanken, NatWest &
• Virgin Money), through Aston Carter now rebranded as TEKsystems. Responsible for conducting end-to-end periodic reviews for business, corporate &
• HNW files in line with client policy to fulfil UK and global KYC/FinCrime regulatory requirements (AML/CTF, Sanctions, ABC &
• Tax Evasion). In addition to UK, USA &
• EU I covered multi-jurisdictional AML regimes such as British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Saudi Arabia &
• UAE to name but a few. Conducted reviews on high-risk clients/entities (e.g. cash-intensive businesses, defence, precious metals, charities, real estate, oil & gas, etc) with complex corporate structures (e.g. PE funds, SPVs, trusts, etc), cross-border transactional activities and products (e.g. trade finance). Resolved more than 500 KYC remediation files per project across business, corporate & institutional and HNW clients, achieving full compliance with 5th & 6th EU AMLD within project deadlines. Reduced backlog of KYC reviews by 60% through process streamlining and prioritisation. Conducted gap analysis to identify missing or incorrect information within the client on-boarding, remediation or refresh process and liaising with the banks internal outreach team to create quality KYC profiles ensuring accuracy, completeness and validity e.g. in-depth Source of Wealth (SoW) and Source of Funds (SoF), ID&V of natural person UBOs and so forth. Performed in-depth transactional analysis (TA) and transaction monitoring (TM). With TA it was important to identify unusual patterns, cash-based money laundering, investment fraud and other potential financial crime indicators. For TM, I reviewed alerts that were triggered by diverse AML typologies to identify unusual or suspicious transactions. Investigated account activity to determine whether they meet the thresholds for UARs or SARs. Prepared and escalated SARs for suspicious activities and DAML for suspected money laundering cases to the MLRO for submission to the NCA ensuring quality and compliance with PoCA while mitigating the risk of 'tipping off' (strictly managing internal communications to ensure that neither the client nor any third party is alerted to a PoCA investigation or SAR submission). Communicated effectively and efficiently with relevant business lines and stakeholders to obtain information needed to complete reviews including law enforcement authorities for production, disclosure and account freezing orders e.g. bank accounts are frozen based on suspicion that funds are "recoverable property" (derived from unlawful conduct). Heavy use of excel specifically pivot tables for high-risk industries and cross-border transactions. It allowed me to instantly aggregate and summarise huge transactional datasets to reveal suspicious patterns, unusual velocity/volumes and hidden counterparty relationships that evade manual review. The following are some examples in transactional analysis: structuring/smurfing e.g. group transactions by 'account number', 'amount' and 'date' to identify a pattern of multiple deposits or withdrawals made just below reporting thresholds; volume/velocity and spike analysis e.g. group transactions by day, week or month to isolate spikes in activity that deviate from a client's expected behaviour and KYC.
