An interview with Kirsty Campbell, Director and Commercial Adviser
Kirsty is a professional director and commercial adviser who has held a range of roles in corporate finance, banking, law, and regulation.
Kirsty shares her words of wisdom and extensive experience in the compliance industry.
What roles have you held in the New Zealand AML sector?
Whilst at the FMA, I was Head of Supervision, which included AML/CFT monitoring for FMA’s reporting entities. I also sat on the NZ National Co-ordination Committee representing FMA and attended a couple of FATF Plenaries representing FMA/NZ. I also completed APG Assessor Training – now that was fun! Mind you, that’s all old hat now.
Kirsty's top tips
Have a really good CRM
With the ability to capture and store customer information securely and in a way that informs your relationship with them and truly allows you to assess the ML/TF risk – and enhance your customer value proposition at the same time. It’s not just a compliance exercise!
Are you being rewarded for the risk you are taking?
Understanding your ML/TF risks means you can understand whether or not it’s worth maintaining or growing a customer relationship or supporting a product. If you are getting paid peanuts but taking on significant regulatory risk, then why do it? It’s not good business.
Ask the experts!
If in doubt, get help (or at least get trained). The AML/CFT Act is an awkward wee beastie and can be hard to interpret sometimes. The guidance (understandably) is principle-based and so can be hard to apply in practice. Do you really know where the lines are drawn?
Don’t try and design, build and operate an AML/CFT framework by yourself unless you really know what you are doing.
For advice on choosing an expert to help with your AML framework read ‘How to Choose The Right AML Provider’.