Partnerships and advanced certifications
Much has happened since last year’s “Law Enforcement Edition” of ACAMS Today.
We have enhanced your access to key anti-money laundering (AML) community leaders through expanded interviews on our online version of ACAMS Today. In addition, the mobile application eliminates any excuse not to have ready access to those same articles and interviews, and we have even added a few “podcasts” that we plan to expand in 2013-14. With all of these new delivery channels, ACAMS will continue to need your expertise, suggestions and guidance on topics, authors, interviewees and general direction on assisting the membership in our common goal of increasing our collective knowledge and expertise.
Exciting new partnerships to assist the financial crime prevention community
Another development where ACAMS will be assisting those in need of financial investigative expertise is the partnership of ACAMS with Utica College. Utica College is the first college in the nation to establish a bachelor’s degree program in economic crime investigation and a master’s in economic crime management.
The partnership will extend some very important benefits to both online and on-campus Utica College students, including free student membership for up to two years, as well as the ability to take the CAMS certification examination upon graduation. Current ACAMS members will also benefit from a tuition rate discount and a waived application fee when applying to Utica College’s online programs.
On the international scale, Charles Sturt University in Australia has joined with ACAMS to provide postgraduate students with the needed guidance and materials so that each student can successfully complete the qualification examination and accreditation to become a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) as part of the course. As the University has said, “This means students will graduate with the dual CSU degree and CAMS qualification, thus greatly increasing their knowledge, expertise, and employability in this growing industry sector.”
ACAMS is excited to be part of this new offering as there is no similar master’s program being taught at an international university. Therefore graduate students from Australia, the U.S., New Zealand, Canada, Tanzania, Singapore, Switzerland and India have already enrolled in this program, and the course will service AML/CTF prevention/compliance officers, the finance industry, banking, law enforcement, regulatory agencies and other related industries in the U.S. and internationally.
We are convinced that both of these partnerships will greatly enhance private-public AML relationships that demand effective reporting, strong investigative skills and solid AML policies.
Advanced Certification — the next tool for AML/CFT/financial crime prevention success
When we published the 2012 ACAMS Today Law Enforcement Edition, we had just begun the development of ACAMS advanced certification. Well the inaugural classes of “CAMS-Audit” were a tremendous success, due to our expert faculty Advanced Certification Steering Committee and the tremendous student body. The classes were extremely interactive and the information sharing was clearly both ways — students and faculty. The next part of the CAMS-Audit process will be the “white papers” that the students must complete by the end of 2013 and will be shared in a library for the ACAMS membership. Now, we will take the same format of advanced certification and create the next level of advancing your CAMS education with CAMS-FCI or Financial Crimes Investigations.
As this goes to press, ACAMS has held several preliminary meetings of AML professionals, law enforcement representatives and financial crime experts, all of whom have confirmed our view on this new certification — that it is necessary for those with experience to increase their expertise in this challenging world of staying ahead of the criminals, terrorist and other fraudsters. Our first school is scheduled for January 2014 and there is much more to come on this groundbreaking push to extend the ACAMS standard to the important area of advanced financial investigations.
You won’t find spin or over the top marketing on this effort, just ACAMS value as you have come to demand and expect of us.
Finally, I want to thank all the members of law enforcement for their constant work in keeping us safe and rooting out criminals.
John J. Byrne, CAMS,
executive vice president
