Job Description:
Job Title: Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO)
Corporate Title: Vice President
Location: Johannesburg
Company Overview:
At Bank of America, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection. We do this by driving Responsible Growth and delivering for our clients, teammates, communities and shareholders every day.
Being a Great Place to Work is core to how we drive Responsible Growth. This includes our commitment to being a diverse and inclusive workplace, attracting and developing exceptional talent, supporting our teammates' physical, emotional, and financial wellness, recognizing and rewarding performance, and how we make an impact in the communities we serve.
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Role Description:
The Global Financial Crimes (GFC) group is responsible for the global collection and analysis of suspected financial crimes and suspicious activity of misconduct committed against Bank of America. The MLRO executes substantive anti-money laundering (AML), economic sanctions and fraud compliance and operational risk practices relevant to South Africa. They are accountable for the requirements of the GFC Enterprise Policies, the South African GFC Country Standard, and the Enterprise Fraud Risk Management Standard. The MLRO works directly with compliance officers, the Front Line Units (FLUs) and Control Functions (CFs). The MLRO reports into the EMEA Head of Financial Crimes Compliance. The MLRO is the local point of contact for South Africa to oversee other criminal acts and to coordinate and ensure reporting of suspicious cases in line with local requirements.
Responsibilities:
- Act as the contact person for all AML, economic sanctions, and fraud related enquiries/investigations both internally and externally for Merrill Lynch South Africa Proprietary Limited (MLSA) and Bank of America, National Association - South Africa Representative Office (BANA SA Rep Office)
- Handle transaction monitoring and investigations including filing with the local law enforcement agencies in South Africa
- Support managing examinations, reviews and audits in relation to financial crimes
- Manage and address enquiries from regulators and clients in South Africa
- Implement local policies and standards for financial crimes and for compliance with sanctions and financial embargoes and bribery and corruption requirements. This will include coverage of Know Your Customer (KYC) policies, standards and supporting technology development - regional input to the global program and addressing local requirements
- Advises and directs the development and maintenance of financial crimes owned policies and standards, and reviews relevant Front Line Units/Control Functions-owned policies and standards to ensure that regulatory requirements and operational risks are appropriately addressed
- Produces and/or oversees independent financial crimes risk management reporting
- Monitors the changes in regulations applicable to Global Financial Crimes, including advising business leaders, directing the appropriate areas to implement or amend policies, standards, procedures and/or processes to address regulatory requirements, and challenging the implementation plan as needed
- Participates in industry forums and monitors regulatory expectations, emerging legislation and regulation, political scrutiny, litigation and key influencers to identify and mitigate emerging risks
- Escalates financial crimes related compliance and operational risks and issues to appropriate governance routines, management/board level committees
- Identifies, aggregates, reports, escalates, inspects, and challenges the remediation and thematic analysis of FLU/CF-owned issues and control enhancements related to financial crimes
- Reviews and challenges internal and external operational loss events, including the development of remediation plans to strengthen controls and providing oversight to ensure they are addressed appropriately
- Participate in the financial crimes risk assessments
- Monitor outsourced functions with respect to KYC, sanction screening and client on-boarding. Conduct sample reviews of customer files
- Provide educational training on financial crimes related subjects to locally based staff and assist in building a general climate of financial crimes awareness
- Maintain records associated with the MLRO function
What we are looking for:
- Previous experience as a MLRO and/or Deputy MLRO.
- Relevant work experience in Anti-Money Laundering, Fraud and/or Economic Sanctions and Deputy MLRO and/or MLRO experience.
- Excellent local knowledge of regulatory requirements
- Demonstrated leadership to partner across various levels in the organization
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate and work with all levels within the organization
- Experience responding to Audits and/or Regulatory Examinations
- Crisp organization
- Must possess excellent time-management, problem solving, and critical thinking capabilities
- Must work across a matrix organization
- Identify, own and escalate data issues as needed
- Must be able to engage and leverage teams and business partners to efficiently deliver business solutions
Bank of America:
Good conduct and sound judgment is crucial to our long term success. It's important that all employees in the organisation understand the expected standards of conduct and how we manage conduct risk. Individual accountability and an ownership mind-set are the cornerstones of our Code of Conduct and are at the heart of managing risk well.
We are an equal opportunities employer and ensure that no applicant is subject to less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender/sex, gender identity or gender reassignment, marital or civil partner status, race, religion or belief, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, membership of the Traveller community, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, civil status, socio-economic background, responsibility for dependants, family status or physical or mental disability. The Bank selects candidates for interview based on their skills, qualifications, and experience.
We strive to ensure that our recruitment processes are accessible for all candidates and encourage any candidates to tell us about any adjustment requirements.