Fintech Regulatory Compliance for Compliance Officers Training Course

Course overview

Compliance officers in fintech firms must control risks created by rapid product releases, outsourced technology, cross-border payments, digital onboarding, APIs, cloud platforms, and crypto-asset services. They are expected to translate regulatory obligations into operating controls that product, operations, engineering, fraud, and customer-support teams can execute and evidence. This course addresses the practical gap between knowing AML, sanctions, consumer-protection, privacy, and operational-resilience requirements and building a defensible compliance programme around real fintech processes.

Participants examine the regulatory perimeter for payment institutions, e-money issuers, digital lenders, marketplace platforms, open-banking providers, and virtual-asset businesses. They learn to map obligations to products and customer journeys; conduct compliance risk assessments; define KYC, customer due diligence, transaction-monitoring, sanctions-screening, and suspicious-activity escalation controls; assess third parties; and create board-ready management information. The course also covers change governance, regulatory reporting, record retention, complaints, conduct risk, data governance, and the control implications of automated decisioning and AI-enabled tools.

Delivery combines instructor-led briefings with worked fintech cases, control-design workshops, regulatory-change scenarios, and peer review. Participants use practical templates to analyse a fictional digital-payments business, identify control gaps, set risk indicators, and prioritise remediation. Each participant leaves with a tailored Fintech Compliance Control Pack: a product-to-obligation map, risk-and-control register, monitoring plan, escalation workflow, and 90-day implementation roadmap that can be adapted for their own organisation.

The programme is suited to compliance professionals working in regulated fintechs, banks with digital propositions, payment-service providers, and firms supporting financial-technology operations. It is equally valuable for managers approving training because it produces usable artefacts and a clearer basis for investment in controls, systems, and assurance.

Course objectives

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

• Map fintech products, customer journeys, and delivery channels to applicable AML, sanctions, conduct, privacy, and resilience obligations
• Build a compliance risk assessment using inherent-risk scoring, control-effectiveness testing, and residual-risk prioritisation
• Design risk-based KYC and customer due diligence workflows for remote onboarding, beneficial ownership, and periodic review
• Specify transaction-monitoring and sanctions-screening control requirements, alert triage rules, and escalation thresholds
• Create a risk-and-control register linking regulatory obligations to owners, evidence, testing frequency, and remediation actions
• Assess fintech third parties and cloud providers through due diligence, contractual-control, and ongoing-monitoring criteria
• Produce management information using key risk indicators, control-breach reporting, and board-level compliance dashboards
• Develop a 90-day fintech compliance implementation roadmap with sequenced actions, dependencies, and accountable owners

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Compliance Officers — who must convert fintech regulatory requirements into workable operating controls
• MLROs and Financial Crime Compliance Managers — who oversee AML, sanctions, suspicious-activity escalation, and monitoring governance
• Payments Compliance Managers — who support regulated payment, e-money, merchant-acquiring, or remittance services
• Regulatory Compliance Analysts — who need a structured method for risk assessments, control registers, and regulatory change
• Risk and Controls Managers — who challenge control design across digital products, outsourcing, and operational processes
• Fintech Operations Managers — who own onboarding, payments, complaints, or customer-service processes subject to compliance controls

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the basic purpose of financial regulation and have some exposure to compliance, risk, operations, audit, payments, lending, or financial-crime controls. Familiarity with terms such as KYC, customer due diligence, sanctions, suspicious activity reporting, risk assessment, and control testing is helpful, but detailed specialist experience is not assumed. Participants should be comfortable reviewing process maps and working with spreadsheet-based registers; a laptop with Microsoft Excel is recommended for exercises. No legal qualification, coding ability, prior regulatory-reporting experience, or experience with specialist transaction-monitoring platforms is required. Complete newcomers should expect a demanding but supported introduction to core compliance practice.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short technical briefings to establish the regulatory and control concepts, then moves quickly into applied fintech scenarios. Participants work with a digital-payments case to map customer journeys, score risks, design KYC and monitoring controls, review a cloud-provider arrangement, and prepare risk reporting for a compliance committee. Small-group workshops compare control choices and challenge evidence requirements, while the instructor provides feedback against recognised standards. The final day is an application-planning workshop in which participants assemble and refine their own Fintech Compliance Control Pack.

Course outline

Day 1: Fintech regulatory perimeter and compliance architecture

• Fintech business models: payments, e-money, lending, open banking, marketplaces, and crypto-asset services
• Regulatory perimeter analysis and licensed-activity mapping
• Three-lines model and compliance accountability in product-led organisations
• Customer-journey mapping for digital onboarding, payments, servicing, and offboarding
• Obligation libraries and regulatory inventory structure
• ISO 37301 compliance management system principles
• Regulatory change intake, impact assessment, and implementation governance

Workshop: Participants map a digital-payments product and customer journey to a regulatory obligation inventory, identifying initial control owners and evidence sources.

Day 2: Financial crime controls for digital financial services

• Risk-based AML programme design for fintech customer segments and channels
• Remote KYC, identity verification, liveness checks, and documentary evidence
• Customer due diligence, beneficial ownership, and enhanced due diligence triggers
• Sanctions screening for customers, counterparties, and payment messages
• Transaction-monitoring scenario design and alert-risk prioritisation
• FATF Recommendations and suspicious-activity escalation expectations
• Case management, investigation narratives, and record-retention controls

Workshop: Participants design a KYC and transaction-monitoring control flow for a cross-border remittance product and document alert escalation criteria.

Day 3: Risk assessment, control design, and assurance

• Inherent-risk assessment across products, geographies, customers, channels, and third parties
• Control objectives, preventive and detective controls, and control rationales
• Risk-and-control register design in Microsoft Excel
• Control evidence standards and audit-ready documentation
• Control-effectiveness testing, sample selection, and issue grading
• Key risk indicators, key control indicators, and threshold setting
• Root-cause analysis and remediation-plan governance

Workshop: Participants build a scored risk-and-control register, test selected controls against sample evidence, and prioritise remediation actions.

Day 4: Technology, third-party, conduct, and data compliance

• Cloud outsourcing due diligence and shared-responsibility control models
• API, open-banking, and data-sharing compliance considerations
• Data governance, privacy-by-design, and records-management requirements
• Automated decisioning, AI model governance, and human-oversight controls
• Consumer duty, fair treatment, disclosures, and digital complaints handling
• Operational resilience, incident escalation, and service-provider continuity
• Third-party contractual controls, assurance reports, and ongoing oversight

Workshop: Participants assess a cloud-based onboarding vendor, identify contractual and operational control gaps, and prepare a third-party remediation brief.

Day 5: Governance, reporting, and implementation planning

• Compliance committee terms of reference and escalation pathways
• Board reporting for residual risk, breaches, and remediation progress
• Microsoft Power BI dashboard design for compliance risk indicators
• Regulatory-reporting calendars and submission-quality controls
• Product-change approval gates and compliance sign-off criteria
• Internal audit coordination and second-line assurance planning
• Ninety-day compliance implementation roadmap development

Workshop: Participants present their Fintech Compliance Control Pack to a simulated compliance committee and finalise a 90-day implementation roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, FATF Recommendations, ISO 37301

A typical training day

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

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions