Criminals have the skills to commit financial crimes costing trillions every year — that means banks and financial institutions need workers with the right skills to stop them.
That’s exactly why one major European financial institution turned to SkyHive by Cornerstone to set a baseline for anti-financial crime skills in its workforce, and to guide major upskilling and reskilling efforts to keep up with global regulations.
The United Nations estimates that illegal money laundering amounts for 2-5 percent of global GDP, or up to $2 trillion annually. The penalties for financial institutions that fail to follow regulations designed to stop these crimes can be enormous, totaling $6.6 billion in 2023. The regulations don’t just cover banks, but many organizations that move large amounts of money, like casinos.
Having workers that understand and comply with anti-financial crime regulations reduces a major risk for the finance industry. And the workers’ understanding has to be much more sophisticated than watching episodes of crime shows — although the description of money laundering in Breaking Bad is a pretty good primer.
Anti-financial crime roles, such as fraud analyst, represent a broader trend in the labor market: the need to blend skills from different disciplines to succeed.
Skills can be divided into three major groups:
- Human Skills, such as communication, teamwork, and problem-solving;
- Technical Skills, which are specific to a particular field, and;
- Functional Skills, such as project management or data analysis, which are business skills that can be applied across a wide range of roles.
In anti-financial crime, experts say the technical skills required are changing rapidly as national and international agencies continue to adjust regulation to stay ahead of criminals and terrorists. AFC workers also need deep knowledge of the finance industry, not just to understand best practices but also to be able to spot potentially suspicious activity.
Even environmental knowledge may be important. Environmental crime, also known as “green crime,” is the fourth largest illegal activity in the world, according to the UN. Illegal trading in protected species, hazardous materials, or even illegal logging and fishing not only break environmental regulations but offer criminals other routes to launder money.
Data analysis naturally plays a major role, as anti-financial crime teams need to comb through large amounts of financial data. Overall digital literacy and knowledge of AI and machine learning will become more important as criminals adopt new technology to commit fraud and hide crimes.
And human skills such as attention to detail, interpersonal skills, and good verbal and written communication skills are needed. At one level, AFC work is about corporate culture, ensuring that people throughout a financial institution understand the importance of following regulations and reporting suspicious activity.
For SkyHive's European customer, the challenge was to assess staff skills quickly. Using SkyHive Enterprise, the organization was able to assess 850 employees across 19 teams, benchmarking their anti-financial crime skills against anonymized employee data and outside job market information. Once the strengths and weaknesses were identified, the team was able to effectively launch targeted training programs.
The initial assessment took only eight weeks. But the customer will also revisit these skills annually, and now that the system is in place it will only take four weeks to complete.
The return on investment was also notable, with $3 million in cost savings by using AI instead of manual analysis; a reduced risk of fines; and greater efficiency in the company’s learning and development spending.
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