Financial institutions across Africa and beyond face rising expectations from supervisors, correspondent banks and the Financial Action Task Force standards that guide national regimes. Meeting them requires more than policies on paper. Someone must fund screening tools, hire and train analysts, staff investigators, justify the cost of monitoring and show the board whether the money spent is actually reducing exposure to illicit finance.

This programme joins two disciplines that are often taught separately. The first half treats an AML/CFT function as a managed cost centre, covering budgeting, resourcing models, vendor evaluation, return on compliance investment and the financial consequences of sanctions, penalties and exit of banking relationships. The second half builds analytical capability: reading transaction data, designing and calibrating rules, spotting typologies such as structuring, round-tripping and trade mispricing, and documenting investigations to a standard regulators will accept.

Learning is applied throughout, never left as theory. Participants work with anonymised transaction files, sample alert queues and case notes, finishing the week with a costed improvement plan and an analytics-backed case report for their own organisation.

On completing the programme, participants will be able to:

• Build a budget and resourcing model for an AML/CFT function and defend it to senior management.
• Evaluate the cost and effectiveness of screening, monitoring and case-management systems.
• Apply a risk-based approach to customer, product and geography risk scoring.
• Analyse transaction data to detect structuring, layering and other laundering typologies.
• Calibrate monitoring thresholds and measure alert quality and false-positive rates.
• Use link analysis and fund-tracing techniques to support financial crime investigations.
• Prepare clear suspicious transaction reports and supporting case files.
• Report AML/CFT performance and cost indicators to the board and regulators.

The programme suits finance and compliance professionals responsible for financial crime controls, including:

• Money laundering reporting officers and compliance managers
• Financial controllers and heads of finance in regulated institutions
• Transaction monitoring analysts and financial intelligence staff
• Internal auditors reviewing AML/CFT controls
• Fraud and forensic investigators
• Risk managers in banks, SACCOs, insurers and mobile money providers
• Supervisory and regulatory officers
• Legal and company secretarial staff supporting compliance

Participants leave with practical tools they can use on their return, including:

• A costed AML/CFT budget template with resourcing assumptions.
• A scorecard for judging whether monitoring systems justify their cost.
• A set of calibrated monitoring scenarios and threshold-testing method.
• A typology library with red flags and investigation prompts.
• A model suspicious transaction report and case file.
• A board dashboard of cost and effectiveness indicators.

Sessions mix finance and analytics so that participants practise both sides of the role. Methods include:

• Worked budgeting models built in spreadsheets from realistic cost assumptions
• Anonymised transaction datasets for rule tuning and pattern detection
• Case files that participants convert into suspicious transaction reports
• Short facilitator briefings on regulatory expectations and good practice
• Group review of each participant's improvement plan

Participants who attend every session and complete the practical exercises are awarded a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion by Vision Reach Global Consultancy.