Money laundering and terrorist financing adapt quickly to every control placed in their path, and supervisors across Africa and beyond are tightening expectations on banks, payment providers, insurers and designated non-financial businesses. Institutions are asked to show that policy, risk assessment, monitoring and reporting form one coherent system, not a set of disconnected manuals.

This programme begins with the international standard-setting framework, including the FATF Recommendations, mutual evaluations and the risk-based approach, and shows how these translate into institutional policy, customer due diligence tiers, record keeping and governance responsibilities. Participants then study the typologies that matter in practice, such as trade-based laundering, misuse of mobile money, shell companies, cash-intensive businesses and proceeds of corruption.

The second half focuses on financial crime analytics. Participants learn how to design and calibrate monitoring scenarios, reduce false positives, profile customers, apply network analysis to uncover linked accounts and document an investigation so that it stands up to internal audit and regulatory review. Sessions rely on worked case files, spreadsheet exercises and group simulations, and each participant leaves with a draft policy extract, a tuned scenario specification and a reporting checklist for their own institution.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the FATF Recommendations and how they shape national AML/CFT laws and supervisory expectations.
• Design a risk-based AML/CFT policy covering customer due diligence, sanctions and record keeping.
• Conduct an enterprise-wide money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment.
• Identify red flags and typologies across banking, mobile money and trade finance.
• Calibrate transaction monitoring rules and thresholds to reduce false positives.
• Apply network and anomaly analysis to trace linked accounts and unusual behaviour.
• Prepare well-evidenced suspicious transaction reports and manage investigation files.

The programme is aimed at professionals who design, apply or examine financial crime controls, including:

• Money laundering reporting officers and compliance officers
• Risk and internal audit staff in banks, insurers and microfinance institutions
• Fraud and forensic investigators
• Mobile money and payment service provider compliance teams
• Financial intelligence unit and law enforcement analysts
• Central bank and sector regulator examiners
• Data analysts supporting transaction monitoring
• Legal advisers and company secretaries

Participants leave with:

• A policy framework mapped line by line to FATF expectations.
• A completed risk assessment template for customers, products, channels and geographies.
• A calibrated monitoring scenario specification with tuning notes.
• A red-flag library for the sectors in which they work.
• A model suspicious transaction report with a supporting evidence log.
• An action plan for strengthening their institution's financial crime controls.

The course puts policy into practice through:

• Short briefings on each element of the regulatory framework
• Worked case files drawn from banking, mobile money and trade finance
• Spreadsheet-based analytics labs on anonymised transaction data
• Group simulations of an alert review and a regulator's inspection
• Peer discussion of control gaps in participants' own institutions

Attendance of all sessions and completion of the case exercises earn a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion, issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy.