Arben Latifaj is an associate managing director in the Financial Crimes Risk Management practice at K2 Integrity, specializing in anti-money laundering (AML) and global sanctions compliance. He assists financial institution clients that require AML transaction monitoring and sanctions screening reviews, suspicious activity reporting (SAR), regulatory mandated independent monitorships, compliance program model validations, and independent testing.
Arben assists multinational financial institution clients specializing in areas such as correspondent, retail, internet, and commercial banking when they are faced with regulatory compliance matters, particularly transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reporting of international payments. He works with global banking clients to monitor for suspicious activity related to cross-border correspondent banking wire transactions by reviewing transactional activity alerted by monitoring software for a variety of risk-based detection scenarios. Arben analyzes alerted transactions related to the correspondent bank client’s activity in conjunction with historical account reviews and investigative research of the transacting parties to ascertain whether the activity is suspicious.
Through K2 Integrity’s transaction monitoring service offerings, Arben has assisted domestic and foreign-based clients with conducting large-scale, multiyear, historical (lookback) transaction reviews. Prior lookback reviews analyzed correspondent banking activity as well as prepaid debit card transactions for AML and sanctions risks. These reviews ultimately led to SAR filings to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) or voluntary self-disclosure (VSD) filings to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Arben has experience using transaction monitoring and sanctions filtering systems from multiple vendors, including Accuity’s Fircosoft, NICE Actimize, Fiserv’s FCRM, and FIS Prime.
As a member of K2 Integrity’s independent monitorship teams, Arben conducts multiyear independent monitorships that involve interviewing key stakeholders; reviewing policies, procedures, and other internal documentation; performing audit testing of AML transaction monitoring and sanctions screening systems, alerts, and cases; reviewing progress on remediation action items to ensure that regulatory enforcement provisions are satisfied; and ultimately reporting observations to regulatory agencies.
Arben received a B.S. in business administration with a concentration in accounting from Saint Joseph’s University. He is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).