From Analyst to Influencer: Leveraging Sales Skills in AML/KYC

Hello and welcome to the show. Today I decided to tackle a challenge. There are some people who listen to the show who do not believe that sales and business development skills can help you improve your career, improve your lot as a parent, or improve your lot in whatever it is that you are trying to achieve that is significant to your life or whatever significant goals that you're trying to achieve. So today I decided to pick the most left field discipline that I can and so I'm going to look at how sales and business development skills can benefit people in the AML space, the KYC

space and monitoring analysts in banks. So now let's define some terms because some of you are wondering ABC what XYZ what. So the words that I'd used were AML. That just means anti money laundering and then KYC, know your customer and then transaction monitoring. Now there are lots of people in Nigeria who work in banks and financial institutions who have these job roles and they're often focused on looking for suspicious activity.

Now of course we know that with the history that we've had in Nigeria, 419 corruption, all these sorts of things and these sorts of job roles have been on the rise including is it risk management or risk mitigation or something like that. But today I'm just going to focus on the anti money laundering crew, the know your Customer crew and the transaction monitoring crew. Now the reason why I'm picking on them is not just because this is topical and you and I know people who work in these fields in banks.

In fact, you probably have a relative who works at the bank carrying out these kinds of functions, but also because these are people who have no customer facing function. Well at least not directly, because when you go into the bank, you speak to the customer, customer service person, that person is lassing with you. They have a customer facing function, the anti money laundering people, the KYC know your customer people,

transaction monitoring people. Typically they sit behind a desk all day, they're looking at files, they're looking at computer programs, excel sheets, ledgers, you know, whatever. I'm trying to figure out you know this 100 M that hit this guy's account. Is it because this guy is a four diner? Is it a legit transaction? What are the probabilities that this is legit? And should we flag the police? Should we flag the EFCC?

For those of you who are not Nigerian, the EFCC is the Economics and Financial Crimes Commission. So you could say it's the some part of the equivalent of the American FBI. So yeah, so that's why I'm picking these people because they have no customer facing functions and I want to show how any knowledge that you have of sales skills and business development skills can help you even if you're in a job role that does not involve interacting with the end customers.

So sales and business development skills are important for anti money laundering People know your customer people, transaction monitoring people, people who are trying to look out for financial crime. It's important to you because it gives you more impact on the job because sales and business development skills will help you with communication skills and relationship building skills and would also help you to be more persuasive because it's going to help you submit your findings to colleagues.

Because you have to present complex information and you also have to influence decisions or gain some buy in. Now this is not all grammar because we've all heard of well, some of us are much older I think was that I think it was well my secondary school anyway. Into university well ahead of the I can't remember the bank. No, not Credit Suisse. But was one of these big banks that had a huge trading division and there was somebody there who was running bad trade that was costing the company money and people.

I think it ran into close to billions of dollars and people were all up in arms about like how can you have this guy who is a trader and your establishment making all these bad deals but yet nobody knew, nobody said look, let's look into this. The transactions here might be shady. Now The thing is, it's not that nobody knew, because let's face it, if there's somebody in the business or if you work in a bank and there are people who are passing all kinds of money left and right and here and there and things look shady.

It's not that nobody knew, but that the people who knew didn't think that they had the power or the authority or the persuasive skills to make this thing a red hot agenda. You know, bring it to the people on the board, bring it to the ex school, bring it to the head of department or whatever and say look Olga, we definitely need to look into this because of this, this, this and that. Now those are the things that sales and business development skills can help you with.

If you're in an anti money laundering role or if you're in a know your customer role or if you're in doing transaction monitoring because you're watching out for fraud, you're going to have much more communication skills. You're going to be much more persuasive. You're going to be able to present your findings to your colleagues or to your departmental chief or chairperson or chairlady or whatever. And you're going to be able to gain buying.

Now sales and business development skills. Also going to help you build trust with internal stakeholders because people who work in these kind of roles, you know anti money laundering, checking up on fraud and things like that, they often have to work with people in compliance and legal compliance. Those are the people who are trying to make sure is everybody following the rules. So let's say you work in Ministry of Finance or CBN and there's a compliance department,

then the compliance people in CBN are the ones who are going round. Sorry CBN. For those of you who are not Nigerian, that's the Central Bank of Nigeria. I think they'll be the equivalent of the American and the UK Fed. So you work in the CBN and you're in the compliance department. Your job is to make sure that you go around, You look at banks, you make sure that all their capital ratios are in check. How much money do you guys have in the vault?

How much money do you guys have to settle claims? Let's see, what else? What is the ratio of the amount of money that you lent out to the amount of money that you guys do have involved so that you need to settle any claim? You know, those sorts of things. Forgive me if I'm using the wrong term, you know, because I'm a lame man here, but I trust that you guys are getting the gist of what I'm trying to say. So yeah, people who work in anti money laundering, fraud transaction, blah, blah, blah,

you always have to work with compliance people. Compliance people are trying to figure out is everybody following the rules and then legal. It's well, legal is also part of compliance. You know, is everybody following the rules? How things have been set up correctly? So you find out that if you work in transaction monitoring or know your customer, you find that you not only have to deal with people within your department, you know your departmental chief, your departmental head, your colleagues, your fellow analysts, but you also have to deal with people across the aisle in compliance and legal.

So there'll be times that you have to stand up, carry a file or folder and go to people in compliance and say, hey look, Kunle or Sadiq Ahmed, you know, this is a red hot issue. I think we should flag this. We have to go after these people. We have to do compliance, we have to do institute court action or we have to go and chase them with police and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So you have to be able to build trust, build influence and be able to gain buy in, not just from people in your department or people in other departments as well, so that you can be effective.

And those are the reasons why, you know when these things hit the news, you know role traders in the West or maybe in Nigeria. Huge cases of corruption is not people didn't know, but there's someone in department who knew that. Look, this thing seems fishy. Billions of naira is just moving here and there any which way. But the figure who am I lowly me. I don't know how to to build the case. I don't have influence. I'm not connected, you know,

blah blah, blah. And so sales and business development skills can help you be more effective in doing your job. Of course sometimes people who have these sorts of functions monitoring KYC, New York customer, sometimes in the limited cases they do have customer facing functions and that is where they have to negotiate or maybe educate people on KYC things because it's not my favorite call. When I receive a call from the bank saying can you come and update your BVN or come and update this, come and update that, you know, blah blah, blah,

blah, blah. And of course, it's a very frustrating thing to do because I'm thinking like I set this up months ago. I've already updated it twice. Why do I have to come back again? Blah, blah, blah. So people who are in this job role, they need sales training so that they can be calm and, you know, educate the clients that yes, you may have done this and done this, but this might have been done incorrectly. We need to do this properly because if you don't do this, it creates Ave. for fraud here,

here, here and here. And this is how people can steal money from your account. So if you do not have customer service training, sales and business development training, and you work in these sorts of roles, you're going to handle these conversations poorly. Because I have family members in the past who have been contacted by these sorts of people. And at the end of the day, you know, you rant, you complain and everything, and they just say,

look, I'm sorry, my you have to come in because you have to come in. And unfortunately, if that's your attitude, you have to come in because you have to come in. The rate of compliance that you're going to get is quite low because people are frustrated, have lots of things to do with their lives. It doesn't seem like it's important and you just say coming because I say so. Chances are you talk to 100 people. Who knows, maybe 90 people are going to ignore you.

But with the proper training, you're able to calm people down, you're able to be personable, have a conversation, you're able to educate them on why this is important, why that's important. Then who knows, You might be able to talk to 100 people and maybe get 50 to come in. You know it's better than having 80 or 90 people ignore you. So in summary, the main benefit if you work in a bank and you work in anti money laundering,

know your customer, transaction monitoring, monitoring, fraud, all these sorts of things. Maybe you listen to the podcast but one but you think look, all these things don't. It's not important to me. These are skills that I'm not going to use. The most important thing is this. By listening to shows like this and listening to these sorts of looking out for this kind of content, you're going to gain skills in strategic communications and is going to make you result focused.

So yes, focus on your technical expertise. How do you read graphs, how do you read fundamentals, how do you flag fraudulent behaviour, blah blah blah. But also pay attention to these sorts of things because how do you communicate strategically? How do you build influence? How do you do cross-border collaborations or cross departmental collaborations, All those sorts of things. So everyone, and believe me, everyone can get better with sales training and business development training.

If you're not convinced, then no problem. Connect with me, tell me what you do and I'll make a podcast episode showing you how you can be better doing your job with sales and business development training. So connect with me on the socials, most especially LinkedIn where I spend most of my time. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link. We're listening to this episode.

My e-mail address will be there so that you can hit me up if that's how you prefer. Also, connect with me on WhatsApp. My phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, you can hit me up on Telegram. To be honest, I really checked that maybe once a month. But if you hit me up on WhatsApp, I can assure you send me a message today, last last tomorrow, you'd have gotten a response from me.

So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.