Xiaoyan Zhu

A financial crime specialist bridging regulatory policy and technical execution. Experienced in AML model validation, sanctions-screening test design, and translating FATF and FinCEN guidance, alongside other regulatory publications and recommendations, into practical compliance controls and system workflows.

Financial Crime Analyst at Compliance Analytics Limited (2025-09 – Present)

• Model validation documentation lead for Quantexa's Cloud AML platform; authored the general validation methodology covering model definition, data quality, implementation, tuning, and ongoing monitoring, with separate client-specific documentation to capture deployment evidence including data quality evidence, test results, tuning evidence, and governance decision logs — enabling Quantexa to reuse the methodology across future banking clients.
• Leading cross-organisational working sessions across Quantexa and client bank teams as the model validation adviser, aligning stakeholders on SR 26-2 validation requirements and remediation priorities, including critical gaps in data retention and ongoing monitoring capabilities, to support the client bank’s ongoing model go-live.
• Leading the firm's sanctions screening testing service; led an end-to-end engagement partnering with IMAG Consulting; built Python-based synthetic datasets across exact and fuzzy match variations to evaluate client screening system, analysed detection gaps, and presented findings to senior compliance stakeholders. Iteratively improved testing methodology and codebase through client engagements.
• Leading development of an AI-powered sanctions screening platform with two interns; overseeing peer-comparison framework design to enable clients to benchmark detection performance across variation types and thresholds within a self-service portal.
• Delivered end-to-end AML risk and coverage assessment for a fintech payment service provider; engaged product owners and transaction monitoring leads to build risk, product, and rule libraries, map red flags to controls, and risk-rank the product suite — contributing directly to promotion from intern to full-time analyst.
• Identified time, scalability and consistency limits in manual red-flag extraction and library mapping, as analysts often disagreed on what counted as a red flag and where it mapped; led SME engagement with a backend team on a RAG implementation, diagnosed reasoning gaps in its output and advocated a pivot to an agent-based architecture, then acted as SME with a second team to keep the workflow aligned with AML operational requirements.
• Acted as AML subject-matter expert for an internally developed agent-based compliance platform spanning risk and coverage assessment, sanctions screening, and the firm-wide compliance platform; guided requirements and communicated with the backend team, then presented the system to senior stakeholders at major financial institutions ahead of engineering handover.

Investment Intern (Off-Cycle) at China Securities Co., Ltd. (2023-02 – 2023-06)

• Focused on primary market research across the Real Estate and Energy Tech sectors, producing in-depth industry and company analysis to support early-stage investment decisions.
• Assessed a port infrastructure investment using engineering feasibility and financial models; forecasted IRR and equity return, leading to successful investment approval and implementation.

MSc in Finance – King’s College London (2024-09 – 2025-09)

BSc in Business – University of Bath (2020-09 – 2024-07)