Jerome Wells is a senior director in the Financial Crimes Compliance practice at K2 Integrity, based in New York. With more than 10 years of experience serving the financial services industry, he specializes in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance, Know Your Customer (KYC) remediations, and the development and review of KYC policies and procedures, enhanced due diligence (EDD), transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reports (SARs), intelligence analysis, and investigative research. At K2 Integrity, Jerome helps clients identify, manage, and enhance AML/OFAC solutions used to comply with relevant local regulatory compliance requirements, such as those outlined by New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) and the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
Prior to joining K2 Integrity, Jerome served as senior vice president and head of KYC onboarding at Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets, where he managed a team of professionals responsible for the end-to-end customer identification program (CIP) and KYC reviews for new-to-bank customer approvals, as well as the ongoing maintenance of existing customers in compliance with U.S. regulatory requirements and UK regulatory requirements as outlined by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Before that, he was vice president within the bank’s compliance division, where he managed the AML advisory team responsible for the review and approval of all high/very-high-risk customers, ensuring AML policies and procedures were compliant with regulations, performing quality assurance (QA)/quality control (QC) testing reviews, and conducting training for various groups within the organization.
Before joining Lloyds Bank, Jerome was an associate at Nomura Securities, where he conducted enhanced due diligence reviews on customers onboarded to the U.S. and UK Nomura entities. Jerome also served as a team lead at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, managing the compliance team covering Private Wealth Management customers, responsible for high-risk EDD, transaction monitoring reviews, and SAR processing and reporting, with a focus on Latin American customers. He previously worked as an intelligence analyst with the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Financial Crimes Area (HIFCA). While at the HIFCA, he was deployed to the El Dorado Money Laundering Task Force, providing analytical support to criminal investigations in the NY/NJ metro area. Additionally, he previously served as an investigator with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) responsible for conducting civilian-led investigations regarding complaints against members of the New York Police Department.
Jerome holds a B.S. in criminal justice from St. John’s University.
