Benjamin C. Email & Phone Number

Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Due to the rapidly changing sanctions environment at the time, I was employed as a contractor to assist with the large sanctions payments backlog HSBC was experiencing. This role involved operating within their level 3 payment screening team which dealt with true matches based on HSBC’s financial crime policies. True matches would either be straight rejected by ourselves, released under exceptions which had been delegated for authorisation within the team or escalated to the relevant advisory team for review. Payments escalated to an advisory team would be for reporting purposes alongside reject or block authorisation or for an exception request to authorise the payment depending on the nature of the true match. Although this team was designed to only deal with true matches the role also involved releasing payments with false hits which had been escalated to us in error and feeding this back to the level 1 and 2 teams to avoid reoccurrence in the future.Key Achievements:• Consistently met payment processing targets• Maintained a high level of accuracy in decisioning payments and all relevant reporting• Assisted with the collation of the team’s statistics/management information for reporting to relevant stakeholders• Worked with management in process improvement idea generation and the subsequent implementation of these improvements• Assisted in completely clearing the payments backlog and bringing the team back within SLA

Poole, England, United Kingdom

This role was very broad as I worked across the entire Financial Crime Screening operations teams to assist with process improvement, issues, projects etc. This predominantly involved working with the payments and customer screening teams across all sites to streamline processes whilst maintaining high levels of quality. I was however involved in a wide variety of other projects where senior management requested my assistance.Key Achievements:• Created and implemented the quality control process for customer screening.• Heavily involved in maintaining and improving the payment and customer rulesets to ensure they were compliant with our financial crime policies but also understandable and easy to follow by the screening operators.• Successfully managed two breaches from initial flagging, through all the associated remediation and finally to issue closure ahead of the given deadlines.• Regularly communicated with the screening stakeholders, including the level 5 teams, to identify solutions to any current underlying issues not only with the output of the screening teams but also the screening functions as a whole.• Formed the customer screening level 5 avoidable escalation process and all of the associated data which feeds into the business unit stakeholder reports/meetings.• Frequently organised and hosted upskilling sessions for payment and customer screening operators to assist in the rollout of new rules as well as tackling issues and misconceptions with the documented processes.

Poole, England, United Kingdom

This team was responsible for quality assuring both payment and customer financial crime investigations to ensure that both the documentation and final decision met regulatory and policy requirements. Where errors were identified we were required to report these back to the operators and their manager and take appropriate steps to upskill operators and/or teams where necessary.Key Achievements:• Primary point of referral for any customer screening process or quality issues.• Assisted with the embedment of new customer screening investigation rules across multiple sites/functions through regular training and collaboration calls.• Responsible for analysing all of the customer screening errors, identifying issues and taking subsequent steps to resolve them.

Poole, England, United Kingdom

My time in this role was split across two functions for the global financial crime screening operation; the training of both new and existing operators as well as the reporting and remediation of any breaches to the various financial crime policies. The training involved annual mandated courses as well as courses we produced to tackle knowledge gaps and these were given via classroom, virtual and on the job training. When a breach to a financial crime policy was identified I was required to investigate the incident and write a detailed report outlining the events, issues identified and required steps to mitigate a reoccurrence. I would then oversee the implementation of these steps so the issue could be closed once all key stakeholders were satisfied with the resolution.Key Achievements:• Received regular positive post session feedback from recipients of my training.• Created a new method of documenting investigation notes for payment and customer screening which saw a notable reduction in processing times and operator errors.• Assisted with the development and testing of the machine learning tool which was ultimately implemented into PEP customer screening.

Barclays House, Poole

This was a payments sanctions screening role in which I undertook risk-based investigations on potential matches to sanctioned entities captured in the payment screening tool. To assist with my investigations, I utilised client details, public data available on the internet as well as requesting further information from clients, relationship managers and other banks. I worked closely with the various sites across the UK, Western Europe, Africa and Asia to complete investigations within the outlined timescales and manage client’s expectations.Key Achievements:• Main point of referral on the team for complex investigations.• Provided regular error trend analysis and feedback calls with onshore and offshore teams.• Worked closely with management to quickly identify and resolve any procedural or technical issues in screening.• Regularly advised and assisted with projects and procedure changes across the department as well as the migration to a new screening tool.• Assisted with testing of system changes before implementation into live screening.

Barclays House, Poole

My primary focus on this team was to reduce the stop rate percentage of the payments and messages going through sanctions screening. This was predominantly through identifying, analysing and producing policy compliant solutions for problematic sanctioned entries. My workload was made up of both daily tasks and long term projects. Daily tasks entailed impact assessments, report analysis and working with management and stakeholders on solutions to any issues we were experiencing or foresaw. I was responsible for seeing long term projects and solutions though from idea generation all the way to implementation. This involved providing regular updates to all stakeholders on the progress of all open projects. Key Achievements:• Lead analyst for any difficult or large reports that had to be generated and analysed.• Managed the team through a department restructure; overseeing all projects on the team and where necessary providing recommendations and assistance.• Worked closely with the Tech department to outline and test system changes and ensure compliance to the sanction policy. • Responsible for constructing and communicating stakeholder information packs that provided monthly updates on screening volumes, open projects as well as reporting on issues and providing recommendations.

Barclays House, Poole

This team was the central point for sanctions queries from customer service areas, relationship managers or other banks. A large portion of my workload was obtaining information to assist with investigations, advising on payments being held and freezing or returning live funds. As part of this role I worked on a wide spectrum of queries and case types, communicating with various teams and departments across Barclays, as well as other banks, to resolve the cases within the agreed timescales. Key Achievements:• Team's main point of referral for complex queries and the primary contact for the Investigations, New York, Wealth and Compliance departments.• Developed and maintained the team’s procedures through my knowledge and working closely with the Compliance, New York and Wealth departments.• Regularly collated and analysed the team’s case volumes for stakeholder reports; identifying issues and making recommendations.• Assisted with managing the team by monitoring case volumes and assigning individuals to queues as well as scheduling and tracking any additional tasks or projects.

Barclays House, Poole

In this role I monitored the flow of payment traffic through the sanctions screening tool and ensured payments met their time cut-offs through close communication with the operations across the UK, US, Western Europe and Asia. My main responsibility was organising and resolving issues for the various sites in India. This involved allocating the 300 operators to different queues based on priorities, communicating new procedures, overseeing incidents and dealing with problems through daily conference calls. I also built strong relationships with the sites across the UK so that I could effectively ensure that high value or urgent payments were prioritised. Key Achievements:• Developed and maintained a comprehensive priority timescale for India, detailing which queues each team within the three sites should be processing in at any given time.• Implemented currency cut-off procedures across the UK and India to ensure service level agreements were met.• Consistently identified bottlenecks in the flow of payments through the screening tool; providing feedback and suggested solutions to management.

Barclays House, Poole

This role required making risk-based decisions on potential matches to sanctioned entities within payments flagged in the screening tools. I used client details and public data available on the internet to complete my investigations. Key Achievements:• Main point of referral on the team and dealt with all complex queries.• Managed the day to day running of the team; organising the users into queues and feeding back errors.• Developed and maintained the team’s procedures.• Collated and analysed the team’s key metrics for management reporting.

Barclays House, Poole

In this role I oversaw the 15-25 operators on my team processing retail client’s payments, ensuring the various time cut-offs were met and resolving any technical or process issues. I was responsible for ensuring my team were meeting their targets and following procedures as well as feeding back errors and assisting with complex payments.Key Achievements:• Was responsible for overseeing training and developing knowledge across the team.• Developed and maintained procedures for the teams.