Quality Assurance/SME
Nationwide Building Society (via AMS)
Total years of experience :3 years, 8 Months
• Establish and maintain quality assurance standards and procedures to ensure adherence to regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
• Articulate QA findings, trends, and issues to first and second line of defence, business units, Compliance partners, and other audiences via presentations and writen reports.
• Lead regular training and awareness workshops (for new joiners and existing staf) to educate staf about roles and responsibilities, red flags, suspicious activities, and reporting procedures etc.
• Coordinate and participate in internal and external quality audits, ensuring timely resolution of audit findings and implementation of corrective actions.
• Facilitate organisational change initiatives, guiding the team through transitions, and ensuring smooth adaption to new processes or systems.
• Serve as a subject mater expert on financial crime and quality assurance maters, providing guidance and support to cross functional teams and senior management.
• Share evolving industry standards and organisational risk landscape with the wider business to encourage cross-functional dialogue and knowledge sharing in combating financial crime.
• Atend Case Clinic to contribute insights and recommendations regarding the treatment of complex cases according to the risk appetite of the Society.
• As per QA findings, trends, and issues, enhance procedural documents, including work instructions and quality manuals (for senior management approval) ensuring clarity, consistency, and compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Perform ad hoc activities as required, such as conducting special investigations, evaluating pilot initiatives and providing feedback,
• Conducted detailed quality check reviews on work undertaken by 1st Line of defence, identifying errors, and providing detailed reworks in alignment with procedures and processes.
• Provided independent holistic reviews of procedures to identify key risks or control points (used to measure the effectiveness of the CDD capability).
• Communicated feedback to management and senior stakeholders on emerging trends and issues.
• Collaborated with colleagues to assess whether financial crime risks have been adequately identified, assessed, and managed.
• Developed and agreeing planned scope and delivering against agreed milestones.
• Anticipated potential risks and issues and proactively identifying opportunities to enhance processes.
• Provided high quality technical Financial Crime SME guidance to drive right first-time performance.
• Actively offered recommendations to the business to implement, action and reduce overall financial crime risk exposure.
• Continuously shared knowledge, best practices, and guidance across the wider team to ensure consistency in approach.
• Demonstrated knowledge of substantive areas of compliance i.e., sanctions, anti-money laundering, and suspicious activity reporting.
• Promptly and accurately created scheduled reports on workload status, highlighting emerging issues.
• Responsible for the day-to-day KYC/AML Quality Control testing, ensured quality standards are upheld, procedural adherence and departmental SLAs are met, and tasks prioritised appropriately.
• Engaged with relevant stakeholders including Financial Crime Operations and Transactional Operations teams (1st line of defence). As well as the Financial Crime and Compliance functions (2nd line of defence), Product and Technology teams, front-office Relationship Managers etc.,
• Contributed to the on-going improvement of the AML function systems and controls (including the review and refinement of trend analyses, processes and procedures, thresholds and reports derived from Ebury's systems).
• Upheld, communicated, and reinforced company and departmental values and compliance culture.
• Assisted in the coaching and mentoring of junior team members as part of their learning and development.
• Formalised and documented AML feedback conducted by AML/KYC Analysts, noting any errors and discrepancies in relation to the investigation).
• Provided technical support with regards to grey areas in policy
• Worked alongside the Quality Assurance function to ensure the alignment of the QC function.
• Monitored and contributed to key performance metrics related to the effectiveness of transaction monitoring, investigation accuracy, and the overall quality of financial crime prevention efforts.
• Diligently assessed the application of policy, procedure, and minimum standards in operational activity to ensure regulatory alignment (e.g., via sample-based, ad-hoc or thematic testing).
• Identify a holistic view of employee understanding, awareness, and the effectiveness of their adoption of internal process and procedure.
• Maintained a collaborative relationship with the wider Group of QA colleagues to ensure consistency of approach (where applicable) and advise on local regulatory Anti Money Laundering (AML) requirements and industry best-practices.
• Acted as an escalation point for the remediation project and BAU team - providing clear and concise guidance in line with agreed project policies and procedures.
• Identified process gaps and issues, ensuring they were escalated through the appropriate channel, working with 1st and 2nd line to rectify.
• Managed and developed individuals from a project and coaching perspective.
• Raised recommendations and enhancements to senior management, on the content and application of internal protocols and standards.
• Assisted in the end-to-end preparation of files for audit readiness.
• Kept accurate MI of low/medium/high/very high-risk case files for the duration of the delivery to cover productivity, overall status, issues, and escalations.
• Agreed on timescales, maintain, and deliver the productivity of back logged files.
2nd Class Upper (2:1)