Financial crime is a board-level exposure. Regulators across Africa and beyond now examine whether institutions understand their own money laundering and terrorist financing risks, not merely whether a policy exists on the shelf. Weak controls bring penalties, correspondent banking restrictions and reputational damage, while poorly tuned monitoring wastes the time of skilled investigators.

This programme starts with how risk is identified and rated at enterprise level, then moves to customer due diligence, politically exposed persons, beneficial ownership and sanctions. From there it turns to the data side of the work: designing monitoring scenarios, understanding model limitations, using statistical profiling and network analysis, and judging when machine learning adds value. Participants work through typologies in banking, mobile money, trade-based laundering and virtual assets, and finish with investigation, reporting and board-level risk communication.

Teaching relies on anonymised case data, guided exercises in spreadsheets and basic scripting-free analytics tools, and group review of realistic alerts. Each participant leaves with a risk assessment template, a monitoring tuning checklist and a plan to apply the learning in their own institution.

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

• Design an enterprise-wide AML/CFT risk assessment covering customers, products, channels and geographies.
• Apply risk-based customer due diligence, including enhanced measures for higher-risk relationships.
• Evaluate transaction monitoring scenarios and tune thresholds to reduce false positives without losing coverage.
• Use data profiling, segmentation and network analysis to surface suspicious behaviour.
• Assess alert and model performance using measures such as precision, recall and alert-to-case conversion.
• Investigate alerts and prepare clear, evidence-based suspicious transaction reports.
• Report risk exposure and control effectiveness to senior management and the board.

The programme is aimed at professionals who own, operate, test or supervise financial crime controls, including:

• Money laundering reporting officers and compliance officers
• AML/CFT analysts and transaction monitoring investigators
• Enterprise and operational risk managers in banks and insurers
• Internal auditors reviewing compliance programmes
• Fraud and forensic investigators
• Mobile money, payments and fintech compliance leads
• Regulators and supervisors in financial sector authorities
• Data analysts supporting compliance and risk functions

Participants leave the programme with:

• A structured enterprise risk assessment template ready for adaptation to their institution.
• A customer risk-scoring model outline with weighted factors and rating bands.
• A tuning checklist for transaction monitoring scenarios and alert quality metrics.
• A worked suspicious transaction report drafted from a case file.
• A board-ready summary format that presents residual risk and control gaps plainly.

Learning focuses on the judgement calls that compliance and analytics teams make daily:

• Instructor-led briefings linked to current supervisory expectations
• Anonymised transaction files and alert samples used in guided analytics labs
• Small-group case reviews where teams argue for escalation or closure
• Role-play of a supervisory examination meeting
• Individual drafting of a risk assessment extract and a suspicious transaction report

On completing all sessions and the practical exercises, each participant is awarded a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion by Vision Reach Global Consultancy, recognising their work on risk assessment, monitoring and investigation.