Sima Salari

The role involves continuous identification, assessment, and mitigation of potential risks that could impact Nab's Sanction & Name Screening objectives.

Key responsibilities:

• Control management - design, review, revision and documentation of quality controls across all functions of Sanctions & Name Screening unit (38 Controls) to mitigate business risk by applying business acumen and promoting accuracy and accountability.
• Perform operational risk and/or compliance assessments across the business unit and evaluate the exiting Controls.
• Event management - develop strategies to minimize threats, ensure compliance with regulations, and protect company’s financial stability and reputation.
• Work closely with Business Unit Managers to achieve sound governance outcomes, including continuous improvement in governance practices.
• Continuously monitor risk levels, tracking the effectiveness of mitigation strategies, and reporting on risk-related issues.
• Provide reports to Senior Management, Risk and Compliance committees.

This highly specialised Sanction Operations role required reviewing and investigating the most complex sanction cases escalated from existing processes, generated from enterprise sanctions screening systems supporting Retail, Business and Corporate Banking customers and escalating to next level processes in an effective and efficient.

Key responsibilities:

• Review and investigation of complex sanction cases escalated from Correspondence & Investigation teams, and breach investigations (Trade/Asset Servicing and Value transactions)

• Reviewing & optimization of Netreveal list/remarks and escalating through appropriate channels

• Working closely with multiple customer divisions and the Financial Crime Risk function to understand the needs of customers currently listed on NAB’s High Risk Customer internal watchlist

• Taking a proactive approach to manage High Sanction Risk Customer lists’ maintenance – additions and removals

• Continuously provide insight, solutions and coaching to the sanctions team to improve quality and effectiveness of payments investigation

• Maintain an up-to-date focus on sanctions risks and emerging trends and threats

• Represent Sanctions Operations at appropriate forums

The role required extensive operations experience in Financial Crime 1LOD to lead and drive significant business change initiatives with a focus on effective risk management, processes simplification, cost benefits and uplifting capability.

Key responsibilities:

• Led Sanction Transaction Screening Alert Management (45 FTE/ March 21 - Sep 21) & Escalated Case Management (12 FTE/ Sep 21 - June 22) .
• Influence business outcomes based on established ops risk & compliance.
• Apply detailed knowledge and understanding of the operational risk and compliance management framework, methodologies and controls to business activities.
• Maintain internal business controls & quality control.
• Build operational excellence and uplift capability.
• Business revenue accountabilities and resource management.

The role required operations management experience in financial crime to drive a significant focus on uplifting regulatory controls, building capabilities and achieve operational targets.

Key responsibilities:

• Leading team of Sanctions Associates of up to 15 analysts and overseeing the day to day activities of the team.
• Workflow management and resource allocations to alert queues, ensuring timely processing of alerts
• Build & implement Work Instructions & Guidance Notes for 4eye-check quality function to improve mitigation of Sanctions risk.
• Identifying, escalating, and managing Sanctions risk within alert investigations team in a proactive and continuous manner.
• Identifying trends, anomalies and process improvements to continually improve mitigation of Sanctions risk.
• Resource management and capacity planning applying AOM methodologies.

The role required planning, coordination, and management of all Communication Solution Services projects for external clients.

Key responsibilties:

• Client Portfolio Management, and project coordination from inception to delivery
• Analysis, draft and reporting of Client projects to ensure quality delivery of the service
• Applying strong negotiation and communication skills in working with multiple internal and external stakeholders and building effective relationships across business areas

The role required management and supervision of research teams of up to 6 analysts to produce compliance, risk and due diligence reports 3rd party screening.

Key responsibilities:

• Management and supervision of research teams of up to 6 analysts to produce compliance, risk and due diligence reports in Thomson Reuters’ Risk Management Solutions (RMS) (previously Financial Risk) division
• Risk analysis associated with jurisdiction-based regulations including Sanctions screening, AML, PEP, KYC, FCPA and CFT
• Training, coaching, and performance management of the team members to uplift capabilities
• Identifying training/development needs and implementing capability uplift programs
• Task allocation & resource management ensuring timely delivery of client requested reports
• Supervision of the research and analysis process, reviewing and finalising client product reports

Achievements:

• My teams were recognized as the Team of the Month on 4 instances during my 19 months tenure as the team supervisor, 3 of which were successive.
• The team with the highest KPI amongst the 14 regional teams was awarded title of Team of the Month.
• Of the three appointed Research Supervisors during my tenure, I trained and groomed two.

The role required delivering in-depth and comprehensive due diligence reports on business enterprises and companies as well as individuals, through analysing information such as Sanctions screening, AML, PEP, KYC, FCPA and CFT

Key Responsibilties:

• Developing in-depth and comprehensive due diligence reports on business enterprises and companies as well as individuals, through analysing information retrieved from government departments, stock exchange references, registers, regulatory bodies and other official sources.
• As a 2IC to my team’s Lead, I conducted first and second level reviews of reports prepared by team members
• Running training sessions for new hires and vendors as well as developing and maintaining regional training material, research methodologies and databases.

Achievements:

• Awarded of Employee of the Month in both locations amongst the 65 and 20 analysts in the Penang and Gdynia offices, in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The reward is based on monthly KPI and customer satisfaction and is capped at once per year per analyst.
• Starting my career in Thomson Reuters in May 2012 as a Research Analyst, I was placed as a Lead Analyst in June 2013, based on performance measures, prior to being promoted to a Team Leader.