Financial Crime

The Financial Crime and Sanctions Analyst is a junior-level, second-line role in the Financial Crime and Sanctions (FCS) Team, part of the firm's Legal Department. The role supports the day-to-day implementation of the firm's financial crime and sanctions controls, with a particular focus on client due diligence and reverifications, ongoing monitoring of clients and matters, sanctions monitoring, and gifts and hospitality, as well as support for the firm's remediation project.

You will be at the forefront of compliance in a fast-paced, global environment and will have the opportunity to work on challenging and engaging matters. The focus of this role will be analysing the financial crime, sanctions and reputational risks of existing clients, identifying and gathering client due diligence materials, and escalating key issues to more senior members of the FCS Team.

The role will also involve supporting the FCS Team with quality control (including recording data and analysing trends), regulatory reporting, internal and regulatory audits, and other risk management and compliance projects, such as the implementation of new systems and tools.

Location Overview: Manchester

The Freshfields Global Centre provides both business and legal services to the firm. Our services are delivered in a way which supports the global nature of our firm and our clients, enables our fee earners to deliver exceptional service to our clients and to do that in a way which is efficient and effective.

Function Overview: Legal Department

This department, made up of both qualified lawyers and non-lawyers, exists to manage the firm's risk exposure and to provide advice to the partners on a range of legal and compliance issues. The Financial Crime and Sanctions Analyst will be a member of the global Financial Crime and Sanctions (FCS) Team in the Legal Department. The FCS Team provides advice to the firm on compliance with financial crime and sanctions legislation and gives guidance on reputational risk matters.

Key responsibilities and deliverables

1) Client reverifications and backlog reduction (AML compliance)

• Facilitating the ongoing monitoring process in coordination with partners and fee earners, particularly in the collection and analysis of due diligence material and records for client reverification purposes.
• Driving down the existing client reverification backlog by working through outstanding reverifications in line with agreed priorities and timescales, and tracking and reporting progress to the FCS Team.

2) Ongoing monitoring of clients and matters (AML compliance)

• Providing support and assistance to the FCS Team principally on client due diligence matters.
• Reviewing records, conducting research, screening for PEPs, sanctions, and adverse media, and reputational risk analysis for existing clients with a view to keeping documentation and information for client risk assessments up-to-date and to agreed standards appropriate for review by internal and external stakeholders such as internal audit and regulators.
• Supporting the ongoing monitoring of high-risk clients and matters in coordination with partners and fee earners, including checking that enhanced due diligence and clearance conditions have been applied and documented, and escalating any new or increased financial crime risks to more senior members of the FCS Team.
• Assisting with sanctions monitoring procedures, including analysing and resolving matches and escalating as required.

4) Gifts and hospitality (anti-bribery and corruption compliance)

• Providing support and assistance to the FCS Team on Anti-Bribery and Corruption related matters, including proactively triaging and analysing Gifts and Hospitality approval requests and escalating relevant data, records and materials in accordance with the firm's Anti-Bribery and Corruption policies.

5) Corrective Actions Support

• Actively executing high-volume, structured CDD and AML remediation projects to ensure client files are brought up to the required regulatory standard within designated project timelines.
• Supporting the delivery of targeted client file review programs, actively managing down backlogs of periodic reviews, and ensuring consistent application of the firm's risk-rating methodology.
• Working efficiently under structured project timelines and meeting defined volume and quality targets to help the firm meet its regulatory and operational commitments.

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