If you work in AML compliance, economic crime isn’t some distant concept. It’s baked into every policy you write, every customer you screen, and every SAR you file. You’re the filter between your business and the financial system’s abuse. That comes with pressure – but also real scope to reduce harm.
One of the biggest challenges is visibility. Economic crime isn’t always obvious. It’s designed not to be. You’re often looking at standard transactions, familiar documents, plausible identities. Your job is to ask: What doesn’t quite fit? What’s missing? What’s being avoided? Spotting patterns, understanding context, and knowing when something is off – to make an informed judgement backed by good data.
AML compliance is often treated as the end process – where alerts are flagged, reports are filed, and monitoring happens. But when it comes to preventing economic crime, it’s worth thinking earlier in the lifecycle. That means shaping onboarding questions that actually make sense for your firm’s risk appetite. It means mapping customer relationships and business activity against what “normal” looks like for your sector. And it means being ready to challenge internal pressure to shortcut checks when the client is commercially attractive.
As such, you need to know where your blind spots are. That could be gaps in your data, staff who aren’t trained to spot red flags, or systems that aren’t tuned to your sector. If you’re working in a UK-regulated business, the FCA will expect your AML framework to be risk-based and proportionate – but it also expects you to justify why you’ve made certain choices. Can you explain your risk rating logic? Can you evidence why one client got enhanced due diligence and another didn’t?
Economic crime also brings pressure from outside the firm. New legislation, increased expectations from regulators, and growing public scrutiny are changing the tone. You can’t just show compliance; you have to show that your controls work. This means tracking how often you intervene, how effective your monitoring is, and what happens after you file a SAR.
Most of all, it means staying alert. Economic crime is rarely static. What looks ‘normal’ today might look questionable in six months. So build habits into your AML programme that allow for review and adjustment – not just once a year, but continuously. Talk to peers. Share patterns. Adjust your models when you spot something new. And don’t let volume distract you from judgement.
You’ll never automate risk out entirely – but you can get much better at spotting when risk is hiding in plain sight.
