Fraud Analyst
95% skill overlap
Your role
AML Analyst
Full profileYour role
Also known as Transaction Monitoring Analyst
- L3 salary
- Not published yet
- Upcoming dated changes
- 7 changes ahead
What the role does
An AML Analyst works in anti-money laundering (AML) and financial crime teams at banks, payment firms, asset managers and other regulated firms. The role reviews alerts from transaction monitoring systems, investigates unusual activity against the customer's profile, and decides whether to close the alert or escalate it. Escalated cases may lead to a suspicious activity or transaction report to the national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). The work applies EU anti-money laundering rules and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards.
Read a day in the life
A day in the life
The analyst opens the alert queue from the transaction monitoring system: twenty alerts are assigned for the day, each with a service level target. The first alert flags a small business account receiving many cash deposits just below a reporting threshold. The analyst reviews the customer's know your customer (KYC) file, expected activity and past alerts, then looks at counterparties and patterns over six months. The activity does not match the stated business, so the analyst writes up the reasoning and escalates the case to an investigator. Several other alerts are explained by a known seasonal pattern or salary payments, and the analyst closes them with a clear rationale. After lunch the analyst handles a request for information from a correspondent bank about a payment, gathering evidence within the agreed timeline. Mid-afternoon a quality checker returns one closed alert asking for more detail, and the analyst updates the notes. The day ends with a team huddle on a new typology shared by the Financial Intelligence Unit.
Levels
- L1 Starting out
- L2 Independent
- L3 Senior or specialist
- L4 Leads a team or an area
- L5 Leads the function
Full level descriptions and job titles
The EFO level names are the common scale; job titles differ between employers.
| Level | What the work looks like | Typical years | Typical job titles |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 Starting out | Reviews lower-risk transaction monitoring alerts with procedures and checklists, documents rationales and learns AML rules, typologies and monitoring systems under quality review. | 0-2 | Banks: Analyst, Junior Analyst, Associate (asset servicing), Trainee, GraduateAsset servicers: Junior, Specialist (entry), Officer |
| L2 Independent | Handles complex alerts and investigations end to end, drafts suspicious activity reports for review, answers information requests and trains L1 analysts. | 2-5 | Banks: Analyst / Senior Analyst, AssociateAsset servicers: Specialist, Senior Specialist, Senior Officer |
| L3 Senior or specialist | Senior analyst or investigator. Leads complex or cross-border cases, reviews reports before filing, tunes typologies and scenarios with monitoring teams and represents AML in projects. | 5-9 | Banks: Senior Associate, AVP, Assistant ManagerAsset servicers: Senior Specialist, Expert, Team Lead (small team) |
| L4 Leads a team or an area | Leads an AML investigations or monitoring team, owns service levels, quality and backlog, and is the escalation point for difficult cases, regulators and auditors. | 8-14 | Banks: VP, Manager, Senior ManagerAsset servicers: Team Lead, Manager, Head of Section |
| L5 Leads the function | Head of financial crime or Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO). Accountable for the AML framework of a legal entity or region, reports to the board and regulators and sets risk appetite. | 12+ | Banks: Director, Executive Director, Managing Director, Head of functionAsset servicers: Head of Department, Director |
Skills
Where the skill weights come from
Each role lists its skills with a tier and a weight. The weights of one role add up to 100 percent.
Source: the EFO role catalogue, built from the ESCO classification and reviewed by the editors.
The percentage is the skill's share of the role; the bars are drawn relative to the anchor skill, which is shown full.
Critical
- Transaction monitoring and reportingWeight 15.4%Relevant to you
- Anti-money laundering regulationWeight 10.3%Relevant to you
- Know your customer due diligenceWeight 10.3%Relevant to you
Important and supporting skills 18
Important
- Investigative reasoning on anomaliesWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Sanctions regimes and screeningWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Professional written communicationWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Attention to detailWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Risk judgment and escalation instinctWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Ethical judgment in grey areasWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Fraud typologies and controlsWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Working to tight deadlinesWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
- Integrity and discretionWeight 5.1%Relevant to you
Supporting
- Querying data with SQLWeight 2.6%Relevant to you
- Ticketing platforms (ServiceNow)Weight 2.6%Relevant to you
- Process mapping and redesignWeight 2.6%Relevant to you
- Organisation and prioritisationWeight 2.6%Relevant to you
- Control mindset (what could go wrong)Weight 2.6%Relevant to you
- Data cleaning and validationWeight 2.6%Relevant to you
Useful
- Visualisation tools (Power BI, Tableau)Weight 0.9%Relevant to you
- Data protection and privacy law (GDPR, CCPA, DPDP)Weight 0.9%Relevant to you
- Stakeholder managementWeight 0.9%Relevant to you
Processes
The work the role takes part in.
What each process covers
- AML transaction monitoringMain
- Client onboarding and KYCMain
- Fraud preventionSupporting
- Sanctions screeningSupporting
Where the role concentrates
How AI is changing the role
Machine learning now scores and ranks monitoring alerts, reduces false positives, links related entities and drafts case summaries.
Read the full assessment
Machine learning now scores and ranks monitoring alerts, reduces false positives, links related entities and drafts case summaries. Much first-level alert review is being automated or sped up. The European Banking Authority reports AI use in EU banks for AML and fraud with expectations on explainability and governance. Value grows in investigating complex networks, writing clear reports, judging when activity is truly suspicious and challenging model outputs. The EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) and the new EU AML rulebook raise demand for consistent, well-documented work.
Dated changes for this role
- EU Digital Identity Wallets: banks must accept themRelevant to you
- UK cryptoasset regime: application window and start dateRelevant to you
- UK Cryptoasset Reporting Framework: first reports dueRelevant to you
- AMLA selects banks and firms for direct EU supervisionRelevant to you
- ECB digital euro pilot with 36 payment providersRelevant to you
Worth knowing
Salary snapshot
Salary figures are not published yet
The L3 salary range for this role, with its sources, will appear here when the salaries section opens.
Certifications
- CAMS
- ICA Diploma in Compliance
- CIPP/E
Concepts to know
- CDD (Customer Due Diligence)
- KYC (Know Your Customer)
- Sanctions screening
- Transaction monitoring
- 6AMLD (Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive)
- Adverse media screening
- AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Authority)
- AMLR (Anti-Money Laundering Regulation)
All 24 concepts
- Authorised push payment (APP) fraud
- CASP (Crypto-Asset Service Provider)
- Customer risk rating
- DAC8 (crypto-asset tax reporting)
- EDD (Enhanced Due Diligence)
- FATF (Financial Action Task Force)
- FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit)
- MLRO (Money Laundering Reporting Officer)
- PEP (Politically Exposed Person)
- Periodic KYC review
- Risk-based approach (AML)
- SAR (Suspicious Activity Report)
- Transfer agent
- Travel rule
- UBO (Ultimate Beneficial Owner)
- Virtual accounts (virtual IBANs)
Neighbouring roles
Roles that need many of the same skills, by weighted skill overlap, with the skills you would need to add.
Sanctions Analyst
95% skill overlap
Your role
Periodic Review Analyst (KYC)
79% skill overlap
To add: Client service mindset
Your role
KYC Analyst
77% skill overlap
To add: Client service mindset
Your role
Chargeback & Disputes Analyst
72% skill overlap
To add: Payments and cards products (schemes, chargebacks, PSD2, open banking), Merchant acquiring and payment processing
Your role
Corporate Onboarding Analyst (KYC)
72% skill overlap
To add: Corporate governance, Client service mindset
Your role
Do this job? Suggest a correction
Sources
Transaction monitoringTransaction monitoring is the ongoing review of customer transactions, usually with rule-based or statistical systems, to detect activity that is unusual for the customer's profile and may indicate money laundering, terrorist financing or fraud. Alerts are investigated and, if suspicion remains, reported to the FIU.
FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit)A financial intelligence unit is the national agency that receives and analyses suspicious activity reports and other information on money laundering and terrorist financing, and disseminates the results to law enforcement. Each EU member state has one, and FIUs cooperate through networks supported by AMLA.
FATF (Financial Action Task Force)The Financial Action Task Force is the intergovernmental body, created in 1989, that sets the global standards on anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and proliferation financing through its 40 Recommendations. It evaluates countries in mutual evaluations and lists jurisdictions under increased monitoring.
KYC (Know Your Customer)Know Your Customer is the process a firm uses to establish and verify who its customer is, who owns and controls it, what the relationship is for and how risky it is, before onboarding and throughout the relationship. In EU law it is carried out through customer due diligence measures.
Explainability (AI)Explainability is the ability to describe, in terms a person can understand, why a model produced a given output, for example which factors drove a credit decline. It supports validation, human oversight, customer explanations under the GDPR and AI Act transparency duties.
AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Authority)The Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism, set up by Regulation (EU) 2024/1620 and based in Frankfurt, coordinates national AML supervisors and FIUs and drafts technical standards. From 2028 it will directly supervise a group of high-risk cross-border financial entities.