Julie Sefton is a professionally qualified KYC and AML Practitioner, holding the ICA Diploma in AML. She is a Member of the ICA (MICA), since 2014, having now gained over 20 years’ experience working in Financial Services at Consulting firms, Investment Banks, Hedge Funds and Brokerage Houses, in the City of London.
Julie specialises in KYC and AML Training, is a Financial Crime Manager, Policy and Key Operations SME, Business Analyst, and has been involved in Regulatory Change Management projects, Section 166 Remediation, and implementation for Client Lifecycle Management.
Her clients have included: Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Commerzbank, Nomura, National Bank of Egypt, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Projects were delivered for KYC/AML training in the UK, Europe and Asia for Tier 1 and 2 Banks.
Julie led a team of 150 KYC Analysts in 3 locations for HCL in 2011 to 2013 as a Policy SME and for QA training for a Tier 1 Bank. Over the last 8 years, she has enjoyed training some very talented young people in the UK, India, and Europe, that have forged successful careers in the field of KYC and AML.
She has recently written a new course for KYC Analysts, and communicates the practical and theoretical aspects together, encompassing a holistic approach, whilst considering the advances in technology. She believes that whilst technology such as Digital ID can help to speed up the process for KYC, it is only a small part of the process, and the analyst must still act as the gatekeeper, absorbing all of the data, documents and the public profile of the client in order to make a holistic assessment of risk, and enable the correct management and mitigation of risk, in order to protect the capital of the obliged entity.
Julie is up to date on the latest developments in Financial Crime Prevention, and is a member of: the ICA, IMLPO, MLRO’s.com, KYC360, Themis, Global Witness, and Transparency International. She is a member of AML and KYC Leaders, and regularly publishes her latest insights and thought leadership in financial media.