Financial Crime Investigator (12-month contract)

About the role

A stored-value facility client failed its last independent AML review and has agreed a remediation programme with its regulator. Compliance Quarter is running it. We need three investigators, and this is the senior of the three seats.

The work is not sanitised. You will be reading transaction chains through five jurisdictions, writing reports that go to the JFIU, and deciding which customer relationships cannot be kept. It is a twelve-month contract with a real chance of extension into the client's permanent team; two of our last four contractors went that way.

You will work from our Wan Chai office three days a week and the client's Kwun Tong operations floor for the other two, reporting to Nadia Rahman.

What you'll do

• Investigate escalated transaction monitoring alerts and document the rationale for closing or escalating each one.
• Draft suspicious transaction reports for filing with the JFIU to a standard that survives regulatory review.
• Conduct enhanced due diligence on high-risk customers, including source of wealth and adverse media analysis.
• Rebuild customer risk ratings where the original assessment cannot be evidenced.
• Identify the control failures behind the backlog and write them up for the client's board risk committee.
• Coach two junior investigators on alert disposition and narrative writing.

What we're looking for

• Five or more years in AML investigations at a bank, payment institution or consultancy.
• Detailed knowledge of the AMLO, the HKMA AML Guideline and JFIU reporting expectations.
• Experience writing suspicious transaction reports and defending your reasoning to a second-line reviewer.
• Business-level English, with Cantonese or Mandarin for interviewing front-line staff.
• Available to start within six weeks.

Nice to have

• CAMS or the ICA Diploma in Financial Crime Prevention.
• Exposure to virtual asset flows and blockchain analytics tooling.
• Prior remediation programme experience run to a regulator's timetable.

What you get

• Contract rate paid monthly with a completion bonus at sign-off
• Medical cover for the full contract term, dependants included
• Overtime paid rather than absorbed
• Certification fees reimbursed on completion
• A genuine route into the client's permanent second line