FIS Spotlight.

1.  How did you get started in the anti-money laundering business?
I got started in AML by accident. At the time that I graduated from UW,  there were no real courses in compliance other than internal training, so I didn’t know much about it. I saw a job posting at Manulife that seemed fascinating and I applied. I started work in August of 2001. In September of that year, the entire conversation around AML and CTF changed. It was then, as it is for me now, incredibly engaging work aimed at solving problems that deeply affect society.

2.  What are the challenges you face in your AML career?
The fight for “effectiveness” is something that I perceive as being a major challenge for all AML professionals. Compliance is, on one hand, meeting a set of requirements in a way that will satisfy our overseers (be they regulators, service providers that act as de facto regulators, or in the case of nations, the Financial Action Task Force)… but this is only one small piece of the puzzle, and I’m certainly not naive enough to believe that we’ve come close to developing a perfect set of rules that, if followed, will curtail financial crime. Our systems are imperfect, and often, ineffective. The measures (or lack of measurement) that we use to determine “effectiveness” are often deeply flawed. This leads to some interesting duality, both philosophically and practically.

In day-to-day compliance, this leads to the need to both comply with the existing rule sets and to implement other measures aimed at mitigating risk and curtailing financial crime, that may not be prescribed in legislation. This can be frustrating for businesses as there are costs to each measure implemented.

In policy circles, this has meant pushing for a more stringent evaluation of the effectiveness of the measures in place. I understand that all things AML are deeply steeped in politics, which is unfortunate. We would all be better off if a rigorous scientific approach could be applied. In my opinion, this would involve experimentation, rigorous testing and the abandonment of processes that did not yield the desired results. This is, of course, easier said than done in a complex global system.

3.  What are the skills that serve you best in your AML career?
Intellectual curiosity and a deep love of solving problems are key. If you believe that everyone will simply follow the rules because the rules are there, this is not going to be your happy place. A sense of humour is also important.

4.  What books/podcasts do you recommend?
I’m reading “Wilful Blindness” by Sam Cooper right now. I’m halfway through, and I’d say “no spoilers”, but as a Canadian, I’m living in the spoilers. I lost a friend from high school to fentanyl quite recently, and reading about how we got to this point in Canada has me thinking a lot about what we might be able to do differently before the next crisis makes its way here. We could have done so much more to fight organized crime starting in the 1990s as the patterns were first being noticed, but so many players dropped the ball. It’s a hard read, but for AML professionals it should also be a motivating read. It should have us thinking about how we can build more effective and resilient systems, not just domestically, but globally.