Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crime Prevention Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends AML Analysts, Compliance Officers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 9 Nov 2026 Course code SD-FFC-006

Before you join: Participants should understand basic financial-services, corporate-finance or regulated-business processes and have some exposure to customer onboarding, payments, fraud, compliance, audit, risk or investigations.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Money laundering, fraud, sanctions breaches and terrorist financing can expose an organisation to regulatory action, financial loss, failed customer relationships and criminal investigation. Financial institutions and regulated businesses need staff who can identify higher-risk customers and activity, investigate alerts properly, make sound escalation decisions and maintain evidence that withstands internal audit or regulatory review. The challenge is not merely knowing red flags; it is applying a documented, risk-based control process under real operational pressure.

This five-day course develops practical capability across the financial-crime control cycle. Participants examine money-laundering methods, customer due diligence, beneficial ownership, politically exposed persons, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, fraud typologies, suspicious activity reporting and enterprise-wide financial-crime risk assessment. They learn to assess customer and transaction risk, distinguish explainable activity from suspicion, build defensible investigation files, write clear SAR narratives and test whether controls are operating as intended. The course also addresses governance, management information, quality assurance, data quality and technology-enabled monitoring.

Instruction combines short practitioner briefings with sector-based case work, facilitated group analysis, investigation simulations and structured application planning. Cases reflect issues faced by banks, payment firms, insurers, multinational businesses and public-sector bodies, including mule accounts, unusual payment chains, shell-company ownership and screening alerts. Participants leave with a reusable financial-crime control pack containing risk-assessment, investigation, reporting and remediation templates suitable for adaptation to their own policies and regulatory obligations.

The course suits professionals who already work with customer onboarding, payments, fraud, compliance, audit, risk or investigations and need a stronger operational understanding of AML and financial-crime prevention.

What you will be able to do

  • Assess customer and transaction risk using a documented risk-based approach
  • Apply customer due diligence and beneficial-ownership checks to higher-risk relationships
  • Investigate transaction-monitoring alerts using fund-flow analysis and evidence chronologies
  • Prepare clear suspicious activity report narratives supported by documented rationale
  • Evaluate sanctions-screening alerts, ownership exposure and payment-screening decisions
  • Identify fraud and mule-account indicators requiring financial-crime escalation
  • Test AML controls using control objectives, evidence samples and exception reporting
  • Produce a prioritised financial-crime remediation plan with owners and deadlines

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Make better alert-disposition decisions using documented investigation rationale
  • Write clearer suspicious activity reports with stronger evidential support
  • Recognise beneficial-ownership, sanctions and mule-account risks earlier
  • Contribute credibly to regulatory examinations and internal audit reviews
  • Build an actionable financial-crime control improvement plan for current responsibilities

For your organisation

  • Improve consistency of customer-risk, alert-review and escalation decisions
  • Reduce avoidable false positives through better scenario triage and tuning
  • Strengthen evidence files for regulatory reporting, audit and investigation requests
  • Connect fraud intelligence with AML monitoring and suspicious-activity processes
  • Create clearer ownership for financial-crime remediation and control assurance

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can explain core financial-crime risks and apply the risk-based approach to control ownership.

  • Money laundering stages: placement, layering, integration and predicate-offence connections
  • FATF Recommendations, national rules and internal policy obligations compared
  • Risk-based approach links customer, product, geography and channel exposure
  • Three lines model assigns ownership, oversight and assurance responsibilities
  • Financial Intelligence Units, regulators and law enforcement reporting roles
  • Consequences of control failure: fines, remediation, criminal liability, reputational damage

Participants can assess customer risk and determine proportionate due-diligence and review requirements.

  • Customer due diligence collects identity, purpose, ownership and expected activity
  • Verify natural persons through reliable, independent documents, data and sources
  • Beneficial ownership tests expose control through shares, voting rights, influence
  • PEP, sanctions and adverse-media screening decisions documented with rationale
  • Enhanced due diligence addresses higher-risk customers, structures and jurisdictions
  • Customer risk-rating models combine weighted factors and documented overrides
  • Refresh cycles trigger from risk events, periodic review and data changes

Participants can investigate transaction-monitoring alerts and reach defensible disposition decisions.

  • Transaction monitoring scenarios detect structuring, rapid movement and unusual patterns
  • Threshold, velocity and peer-group rules calibrated against customer profiles
  • Alert triage separates false positives, explainable activity and escalation candidates
  • Investigations reconstruct fund flows using account, payment and external data
  • Link analysis maps counterparties, common identifiers and indirect relationships
  • Scenario tuning uses alert outcomes, typologies and quality-assurance findings
  • Documented disposition rationales support audit trails and defensible decisions

Participants can structure an investigation file and prepare a clear suspicious activity report narrative.

  • Case plans define allegations, scope, evidence sources, roles and deadlines
  • Chronologies organise transactions, communications, alerts and investigative actions
  • Source-of-funds and source-of-wealth analysis tests economic plausibility
  • Suspicion thresholds distinguish internal escalation from regulatory reporting decisions
  • SAR narratives state who, what, when, where, why and how
  • Tipping-off restrictions protect reporting confidentiality and investigation integrity
  • Records retention schedules preserve evidence under legal and policy requirements

Participants can assess sanctions and terrorist-financing indicators and escalate screening decisions appropriately.

  • Sanctions regimes distinguish list-based, sectoral, ownership and territorial restrictions
  • Fuzzy matching resolves transliteration, aliases, identifiers and false-positive alerts
  • Fifty-percent ownership rules identify blocked entities beyond named parties
  • Payment screening examines originators, beneficiaries, intermediaries and message fields
  • Trade-based money laundering indicators include invoice manipulation and dual-use goods
  • Terrorist financing patterns connect small-value transfers, charities and conflict zones
  • Escalation decisions address holds, rejects, freezes and regulatory notifications

Participants can identify fraud events with AML implications and coordinate appropriate intelligence sharing.

  • Fraud typologies cover authorised push payment, account takeover and mule activity
  • Red flags distinguish customer error, policy breach, fraud and money laundering
  • Behavioural analytics compare device, location, timing and transaction deviations
  • First-line escalation protocols preserve evidence while protecting customers and accounts
  • Fraud-AML intelligence sharing joins cases, typologies and control improvements
  • Recovery options assess recalls, freezes, indemnities and law-enforcement referrals
  • Root-cause analysis identifies control gaps after confirmed financial-crime events

Participants can assess financial-crime risk and test whether key controls operate effectively.

  • Enterprise-wide risk assessment scores inherent risk, controls and residual exposure
  • Risk taxonomies organise customer, product, channel, geography and transaction risks
  • Control design specifies preventive, detective and corrective control objectives
  • Control testing samples evidence, evaluates operation and records exceptions
  • Key risk indicators set thresholds, ownership, reporting frequency and response
  • Risk appetite statements define acceptable exposure and escalation boundaries
  • Management information reports risk trends, overdue actions and control performance

Participants can establish governance evidence and assurance routines for an AML control framework.

  • Board reporting translates financial-crime risk into decisions, challenge and oversight
  • MLRO responsibilities cover independence, authority, resources and regulatory liaison
  • Policies, procedures and playbooks establish consistent control execution
  • Training needs analysis targets roles, risks, knowledge gaps and evidence
  • Quality assurance reviews alert handling, investigations and reporting quality
  • Internal audit assesses design, effectiveness, governance and remediation closure
  • Regulatory examination files evidence governance, controls, testing and decisions

Participants can assess data, model and vendor risks affecting financial-crime detection and reporting.

  • Data lineage traces customer and transaction fields from source to report
  • Data-quality controls test completeness, accuracy, timeliness and duplicate records
  • Model governance documents assumptions, validation, drift and change approvals
  • Network analytics prioritises connected accounts, shared devices and transaction clusters
  • Vendor due diligence assesses screening, monitoring and case-management providers
  • Privacy-by-design balances investigation access, lawful basis and retention limits
  • Automation exceptions route unresolved matches and failed data feeds

Participants can prioritise practical financial-crime control improvements for their own responsibilities.

  • Gap assessment compares current controls with risk assessment findings
  • Prioritisation matrix ranks remediation by risk, effort, owner and deadline
  • Thirty-sixty-ninety-day action plans sequence control improvements and dependencies
  • RACI matrices assign accountability for monitoring, investigation and reporting actions
  • Testing calendars schedule assurance reviews, evidence collection and management reporting
  • Incident lessons translate case findings into revised rules and procedures
  • Personal application plans identify immediate changes and stakeholder conversations

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Customer risk-rating template
  2. Enhanced due-diligence checklist
  3. Alert investigation case-file template
  4. Suspicious activity report narrative model
  5. Financial-crime control-testing checklist
  6. Ninety-day remediation action plan

Who should attend

  • AML Analysts — need stronger judgement for alerts, investigations and escalation decisions
  • Compliance Officers — oversee AML controls, policy implementation and regulatory reporting
  • Fraud Managers — connect fraud cases, mule activity and money-laundering indicators
  • KYC and Onboarding Managers — assess customer risk, ownership and due-diligence evidence
  • Internal Auditors — review financial-crime controls and test evidence of effective operation
  • Risk Managers — assess enterprise-wide exposure and track remediation priorities

Skills and tools covered

Customer risk assessmentTransaction monitoringFinancial-crime investigationsSanctions screeningSAR reportingControl testing

Tools and standards

FATF Recommendations, FATF Risk-Based Approach, Wolfsberg Group Principles, Three Lines Model

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to establish core methods, followed by case work drawn from customer onboarding, payments, fraud and investigations. Participants assess risk factors, review transaction patterns, document alert dispositions, draft reporting narratives and evaluate control evidence in facilitated groups. Simulations develop judgement on escalation, sanctions and suspicious-activity decisions. Structured discussion compares approaches across sectors and jurisdictions. Each participant completes application planning that translates course methods into priority actions for their own role and control environment.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand basic financial-services, corporate-finance or regulated-business processes and have some exposure to customer onboarding, payments, fraud, compliance, audit, risk or investigations. Familiarity with terms such as customer due diligence, sanctions, suspicious activity reporting and internal controls is helpful. Participants should be comfortable reading transaction records, customer files and policy extracts. Prior experience conducting AML investigations or writing regulatory reports is not required. No legal qualification, specialist certification, programming skill or advanced statistical knowledge is required.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You should have basic familiarity with regulated-business processes, customer onboarding, payments, fraud, risk, audit or compliance. You do not need prior AML investigation experience, a legal qualification or a specialist certification.

Bring a laptop if possible, plus any non-confidential examples of policies, process maps or control issues you want to consider. Course materials are provided, and no proprietary systems or customer data are required.

It is designed for AML analysts, compliance officers, KYC staff, fraud managers, auditors, risk managers and investigation personnel. It is also suitable for managers responsible for financial-crime controls or remediation.

This course connects AML, sanctions, terrorist financing and fraud within one financial-crime control framework. It gives particular attention to the handoffs between onboarding, transaction monitoring, investigations, reporting and assurance.

Participants receive reusable templates for customer risk assessment, investigation files, SAR narratives, control testing and remediation planning. These can be adapted to internal policies, jurisdictional rules and operational workflows.

The programme runs from 08:30 to 16:30 each day, providing about 6.5 contact hours daily. Time is divided across ten modules, using instructor input, cases, group analysis, simulations and application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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