I am interested in making a career transition into the financial crime sector. I have a degree in data analytics, but don’t have any financial related work experience. I do plan on working on some self-directed projects on kaggle related to financial crime and fraud detection.
I wanted to ask if taking any courses from the ICA (international Compliance Association) would help me in obtaining a entry level job as a fincrime compliance analyst role?
It there are any other tips that anyone has on how I can improve my job search and build my skills that would be greatly appreciated.
At the moment i don’t know who’s really hiring. Its a time where fincrime has run it course and becoming extremely crowded which is coming from somebody that has almost 10 years of experience. I have seen entry level roles that ask for an ICA or ACAMs or similar qualification. Lastly i want to wish you well.
Also here from FinCrime with roughly 5 years experience and I agree with the other comment.
Currently, there’s not really much hiring going on, especially in the typical centers like London. If the companies can they like to outsource to Poland and India or similar.
The big topic currently going around is AI, so your data analytics background could be helpful and I think a certification could be a good addition to show you already now the basic concepts in Financial Crime. Nevertheless, unless you’re solely focusing on the UK, I would rather not go for ICA (although I only heard good things about it), because no one knows or cares about it outside the UK. CAMS is the number one and also quite broad, unfortunately a bit US focused, but very widely accepted and gives a good network, with many local events etc. I can only suggest this, I enjoyed studying for it.
I later on also did CFCS, which is rather international and also interesting because it includes more topics from US, UK, Canada and Australia, but also some topics aside from AML and Sanctions, like Fraud, Bribery, Corruption, Cybersecurity, Asset recovery etc.
Good luck to you and all the best, it’s currently not the easiest time to get into the field, but I am sure with your background, some studies and time it’ll work out!
I personally didn’t pay for the CAMS certification, as my employer at that time did. I know especially American companies are likely to pay for it.
The one annoying thing about ACAMS, although as mentioned above I do enjoy a lot of their content and especially their local in-person events in the local chapter as they are great to network, is the fact that they want the membership renewed every 1 or 3 years depending on the package you buy. I mean of course you get some benefits to the membership, but to be fair, it is really bothering and I know alao highly debated within the community.
just retired from financial crime after 25 years. agree with the above that the field is dramatically changing, but i suspect that data skills remain marketable for risk assessment, the eternal struggle to make suspicious activity reporting effective, and AI implementation.
the most effective financial crime credential remains regulatory or law enforcement experience, if you have the interest. if not, agree with the above that ACAMS has become table stakes to get into financial crime.