When most walk into a bank, they deal with the public-facing staff. Bank tellers. Maybe a loan officer. But what many don’t realize is that there is a whole group of personnel behind the scenes, yet they are on the front line against financial crime. They are the anti-money laundering compliance staff. You don’t interact with them directly, but they’re the ones looking for signs of suspicious financial activity. Sara Beth Felix is an anti-money laundering expert and consultant who helps banks get their compliance act together. Designated host Yaya Jata Fanusie recently spoke to Sarah Beth Felix about how good AML experts are wired differently and need to be active and perceptive in identifying suspicious transactions within their institutions.

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Designated’s Proud Sponsors: Amid escalating regulatory demands and a surge in fraud, the need for financial institutions to remain compliant, efficient, and informed is paramount. What’s getting in the way? Manual processes? Lack of insight to regulatory changes? Lack of transparency for decision making?​ ​ With Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions, financial institutions achieve more than 40% more efficient customer onboarding – making their teams even faster at reducing risk to fraudulent losses at the same time.​ ​ Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions empower financial institutions to safely onboard and continuously evaluate customers, members, and vendors and increase new business securely through automated technology.​ ​ Thomson Reuters equips institutions to navigate complexities with confidence by elevating beyond mere risk management, setting new industry standards for decision-making and operational efficiency. Visit TR.com/CLEAR to learn more.

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Hummingbird is a compliance operating system reimagining what's possible from financial crime investigations. By providing financial institutions with fast and easy data integrations, seamless report filing, and time-saving automation and AI tools, Hummingbird helps those on the front lines of financial crime quickly get to the heart of each investigation. Today’s criminals are sophisticated, tech-savvy, and agile. The tools used to fight them should be too. To learn more, visit hummingbird.co or follow us on LinkedIn.

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Illicit Edge: Breaking News for Financial Crime Yaya Jata Fanusie, a former CIA analyst with years of experience in counterterrorism and financial crime investigations, will go behind the scenes with the professionals working to safeguard the global financial system from illicit acts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it take to run a nation’s anti-financial crime agency and stay one step ahead of those adapting to the changing world of finance faster than the government agencies tasked with stopping them? By building better investigative and analytic methods through new technologies. Dr. Shlomit Wagman was the Director-General of the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority. She served when terrorist groups in the region first began experimenting with cryptocurrencies. She saw their new methods up close and helped develop technologies and investigative methodologies to go after them. Designated host, Yaya Jata Fanusie recently spoke with Dr. Wagman where she described the challenges and successes while leading such a massive operation and reminds us all that technology is a tool that can be used, for good and bad, depending on who yields it and how.

Designated’s Proud Sponsors:

TRM offers leading blockchain intelligence for AML compliance at financial institutions, crypto businesses, and regulatory organizations alike - with sanctions support on 65 blockchains and coverage of more than 70 million digital assets. In a recent customer survey, 85% of users agree that TRM accelerates their work. 92% of users agree that TRM provides actionable intelligence. And 83% of users agree that TRM has provided intelligence they would not otherwise have. See for yourself why our customers rave about TRM by requesting a free trial or demo at trmlabs.com

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Scott Baucum’s official title at Bayer U.S. is Vice President of Special Compliance and Asset Protection. But his day-to-day focus is stopping those bad actors attempting to infiltrate American technology companies to steal their proprietary data. Sometimes those scheming to steal exist within the ranks of the companies targeted. And as Scott Baucum knows firsthand, these “insider threats” often pose the most risk. Designated’s host, Yaya Jata Fanusie, spoke with Scott about what it's like being a target for economic espionage and to find out how a kid who grew up on a farm in Texas applies his vast agricultural knowledge toward dismantling Chinese spies plotting to steal biotech secrets from American companies.

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Designated’s Proud Sponsors: TRM offers leading blockchain intelligence for AML compliance at financial institutions, crypto businesses, and regulatory organizations alike - with sanctions support on 65 blockchains and coverage of more than 70 million digital assets. In a recent customer survey, 85% of users agree that TRM accelerates their work. 92% of users agree that TRM provides actionable intelligence. And 83% of users agree that TRM has provided intelligence they would not otherwise have. See for yourself why our customers rave about TRM by requesting a free trial or demo at trmlabs.com

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Illicit Edge: Breaking News for Financial Crime Yaya Jata Fanusie, a former CIA analyst with years of experience in counterterrorism and financial crime investigations, will go behind the scenes with the professionals working to safeguard the global financial system from illicit acts. #financialcrime #compliance #china #blockchain #espionage

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.