Network for Financial Crime Prevention

Network for Financial Crime Prevention

A community for risk/compliance and anti financial crime officers to learn and grow together. You will find content with various topics to help fulfill this ambition.

  1. Beyond ChatGPT: The AI Arsenal Compliance Has Been Ignoring

    APR 16

    Beyond ChatGPT: The AI Arsenal Compliance Has Been Ignoring

    In this episode, guest host Marika Torsdotter sits down with AI and financial crime compliance expert Aneta Klosek to cut through the noise around AI and reveal what most compliance professionals are still missing.While the industry fixates on large language models like ChatGPT, Aneta argues there's a whole ecosystem of AI algorithms quietly powering or failing to power the fight against financial crime. The conversation breaks down three concrete use cases:* Gradient Boosting — the workhorse inside most transaction monitoring systems, learning from historical patterns to prioritize alerts and reduce false positives far beyond what static rule-based systems can achieve.* K-Means Clustering — an unsupervised learning technique that segments customers by behavior, not just category. A $50,000 transfer that looks normal for a corporate treasury cluster is a massive red flag for a retail student cluster. Context is everything.* Word Embeddings — the technology that bridges unstructured text and risk intelligence. From recognizing that "Muhammad Al-Hassan" and "M. Al-Hassan" are the same person, to understanding that "cleared of fraud" and "charged with fraud" carry opposite risk signals this model brings semantic intelligence to name screening and adverse media.Aneta closes with a hard truth: the biggest gap in the industry isn't technology it's the skill gap between technical teams and compliance officers, and the dangerous tendency to treat AI as a pilot project rather than a core business strategy. Meanwhile, criminals face none of those constraints.Bottom line: Stop treating AI as a side project. Start with your data. Build from clarity, not hype.

    30 min
  2. International Women's Day Special: War-Rooming for Sanctions, Fighting Financial Exclusion & the Human Side of Financial Crime | Luma Zitani

    FEB 25

    International Women's Day Special: War-Rooming for Sanctions, Fighting Financial Exclusion & the Human Side of Financial Crime | Luma Zitani

    In this episode, host Marika Torsdotter sits down with Luma Zitani, a financial crime practitioner with 20 years of experience across small banks, large banks, and consultancy. Originally from Syria, Luma brings a perspective to this work that goes far beyond regulation — for her, financial crime prevention is deeply personal, and the stakes have never been abstract. Luma opens up about what keeps her in the field two decades on: the intellectual challenge, the geopolitical pulse of it all, and the genuine conviction that her day job makes the world a little more just. She unpacks why economists make surprisingly great financial crime specialists — because understanding macro cause-and-effect and thinking like a criminal are more connected than most people realize. The episode's standout moment is Luma's account of a quiet, unsung win: how she and her team war-gamed a major sanctions scenario before it happened, modeled every resource and volume implication, and when the sanctions finally hit, they were operational and screening within a day — a full 10 days ahead of every other bank. Nobody outside the room ever knew. Luma also sounds a clear warning about a worrying trend: after years of progress on financial inclusion, the pendulum is swinging back. Debanking whole countries and communities is becoming fashionable again — and she's fighting hard to make sure it doesn't go all the way. Topics covered: Why financial crime prevention needs to feel vocational, not just like a jobThe personal stakes: growing up in Syria and why fighting financial crime mattersWhat economists bring to financial crime that law enforcement backgrounds don'tWhat women uniquely bring to the field — reading people, minimizing harm, the pastoral dimensionThe aging technology problem: legacy systems vs. rapidly evolving criminal toolsWhy the future belongs to "super geeks" who embrace new technologyThe financial exclusion pendulum: from debanking charities to a worrying swing backThe untold war room story: being 10 days ahead of every other bank when major sanctions hitCatastrophizing as a compliance superpower — why stress-testing scenarios saves lives

    17 min
  3. International Women's Day Special: Sanctions, AI Screening & Breaking the Glass Ceiling in FCP | Hera Smith

    FEB 25

    International Women's Day Special: Sanctions, AI Screening & Breaking the Glass Ceiling in FCP | Hera Smith

    In this episode, host Marika Torsdotter reconnects with Hera U. Smith, a financial crime and third-party risk specialist at Moody's, with over a decade of experience spanning sanctions, export controls, and AML — across both the United States and Europe. Hera's path into the field is one few would have predicted: she started in litigation law at a firm in Los Angeles, passed the bar, and stumbled into banking compliance just as Russia's invasion of Crimea was triggering a wave of new sanctions that needed someone to interpret, apply, and operationalize them fast. That turning point shaped everything. The conversation covers a lot of ground — from a fascinating Federal Reserve study showing AI-powered LLMs can cut false positives in sanctions screening by over 90%, to the surprisingly old-school ways sanctions evaders are still getting away with it (think: painting over ship IMO numbers). Hera also shares an unexpected transferable skill she never saw coming: tutoring kids. And in a candid moment, Hera speaks to something the series is all about — the gender shift that happens as women climb the compliance ladder. Equal or majority at entry level, but increasingly outnumbered at the top. It's a dynamic she's seen firsthand, and it's exactly why conversations like this one matter. Topics covered: What the compliance industry gets wrong — and why reaching out to tech companies is the fixHow AI and LLMs are transforming sanctions screening (with real data from a Federal Reserve study)Why compliance professionals should stop being afraid to experiment with technologyHera's unexpected career path: from LA litigation law to sanctions specialist in EuropeThe transferable skill nobody talks about: teaching kids how to simplify complex materialMentorship and why loyalty shouldn't hold you back from growingSanctions evasion tactics: the old-school methods still in use todayThe gender gap in senior compliance roles — and why it needs to change

    19 min

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A community for risk/compliance and anti financial crime officers to learn and grow together. You will find content with various topics to help fulfill this ambition.

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