Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep34: My job as a financial crime compliance manager.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I talk about how I got into financial crime compliance and doing due diligence reviews on the biggest banks in the world as part of my role at Standard Chartered Bank. So back in 2013, no 2015, I was headhunted

Starting point is 00:00:51 to join Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore in a regional role covering APAC where it was a new team that was established to essentially manage the challenges that Standard Chartered Bank as a company had faced in the anti-money laundering space in the past couple of years. So how I got the call from the HR team directly was very interesting. In fact, at the time, I was with Visa. And as you know, Visa is not exactly a bank. It is related to financial services, of course, but it is not a bank per se. So in fact, what got me there was a very complete LinkedIn profile where I updated my past experience as a regulatory auditor with Ernst & Young, as well as me being in a global internal audit team, team visiting all the countries in Southeast Asia, especially. So I got the chance to

Starting point is 00:02:02 join the team. It was a pioneer pioneer team so what that meant was that basically there was nothing there but there comes the opportunity to actually build something based on the skills that I had picked up as well as the experience I had gathered up to that point in time so this is very exciting so if you're a person that really loves challenging projects and really love being creative and structured at the same time, I would say that that was an opportunity that I could not miss. So I took the leap of faith and returned to the financial services banking industry and really deep dive into the new role. So compliance is actually a very popular area in the recent years and it's still very popular right now and of course there are many

Starting point is 00:02:54 areas within compliance that I will not get into but one of the more popular ones of course is anti-money laundering. So this is essentially a space where the banks are supposed to ensure that they have the reliable compliance frameworks to make sure that they understand all the transactions that have gone through and these are effectively safeguarded. team was to visit the clients of Vantage Chartered Bank located all over Asia Pacific, review that specific framework that they have put in place and provide comments on whether we as a global bank felt comfortable at the level of controls that they have had in place. So it's very, like I said, it was very exciting, but also challenging at the level of controls that they have had in place. So it's very, like I said, it was very exciting, but also challenging at the same time, because what is new is always challenging. And even within the company, when you establish a new team or a new department, there's always that challenge to integrate within and to actually get the execution

Starting point is 00:04:02 up and running and actually moving. But that was fun. Many, many crazy hours that actually taught me that work-life balance is something that is so important, regardless of whichever space that you have chosen to pursue your career in. The other thing I managed to pick up on and really trained me was the building relationships and also maintaining relationships with key stakeholders. So in this role right now, I had to work with the respective countries which had many, many stakeholders as part of planning the visits or any controls that had to be implemented

Starting point is 00:04:40 or any changes to the framework and so forth. So there was a lot of emails back and forth, phone calls, face-to-face travel also. Aside from that, there was also the added layer of really having to become a business partner. So this is really away from the time before that whereby it's more like a police relationship. But right now, it's more of a business partner. I think that's the really big thing that a lot of people in the second or third line of controls don't understand is that it's so important to align with the business team,

Starting point is 00:05:18 really able to add value and support the business so that compliance is seen as a business enabler and not a business stopper. Right. So I really focused on that bit, really connecting with different people, giving them a call. And it was very challenging at that time because, I mean, as you guys know, I am an introvert, so I connect with people in limited doses as possible. But I think in that role and within a few months, I was actually promoted to the governance position as a manager. So I took on strategic projects worth millions of dollars. And suddenly I found myself, aside from just dealing with a couple of countries, I was dealing with any function that you could think of. On behalf of the bank, running the regulatory portfolio, which resulted in direct reporting

Starting point is 00:06:12 to the US, UK regulators and some local regulators at that. So it was pretty crazy. I think that this was the role that I learned the most. And in this role, I not just got to step up as a very young leader. I think the time that I was one of the key stakeholders in the multi-million dollar project, I was, I think it was maybe 26, 27 maybe. And that was where I faced the biggest challenge of my career to date because I look young which does not help I sound young which also doesn't help and I think being able to create that confidence to be able to gain that

Starting point is 00:06:55 respect in terms of what the insights that I have the ideas what taught, that was something that really hard work. Yeah, it took a lot of hard work, persistence, a lot of cannot say no, cannot say die attitude to really push forward because it was an extremely intense time. And as part of the role, I have also ran specialists and expert trainings in many, many business hubs hubs so I've been to New York, London, Dubai, I ran the training in Hong Kong and then Singapore twice to audiences of like hundreds of people including a lot of managing directors obviously they make millions of dollars a year so it was really a lot of like stepping out of my comfort zone never had i thought in my life that i would be able to present in front of like 300 people but that

Starting point is 00:07:51 definitely happened um push comes to shove i decided that you know what i am just going to do it um that and that's something that i still remember and i i hold that memory quite fondly also. Aside from that, I think one of the other memories I had of this role was, I think me and my colleagues, we were running the training, but up to the last minute, because of obviously regulatory approvals and whatnot, the training materials were massively delayed. And I recall that we had this presentation in New York on Monday mornings. That starts at nine o'clock. But when we were, three of us, when we were flying to New York on business, we could not, we still have not finished the slides.

Starting point is 00:08:36 It was probably about like 80% there. So we're pretty much at our seats, kind of jumping to each other's seat to review the slides over the 24-hour flight from Singapore to New York. And that was really crazy. But I mean, after that, you know, the presentation skills is just something that I had to work on because I still had so many sessions to go that I could not just say, okay, you know, guys, I don't want to do this anymore. So it's really like when you're in it, you're in it. And yeah, I mean, it's for you to really grab the opportunity because I could have just said,

Starting point is 00:09:09 okay, you know what? I don't want to take on this project. I'm scared. I don't think I can do it. And just pass that opportunity over to someone else. So that's the case with a lot of young leaders, right? And then the young high-performing leaders I work with I a lot of them have this very similar trait of like wanting that challenge and just going for it but the the thing is that when they are at that position you need confidence yeah the rah-rah motivation is great but you also need real competence so I have learned that the hard way and I can't even recall how many crazy hours that I've put in but thank god I managed to figure it out so nowadays I really help my ambitious young leaders to really take control of their career

Starting point is 00:10:00 and also to grab the opportunities as they come along because sometimes the opportunities don't come when you think that you're ready for them sometimes it comes and it's really up for you to see it and grabs it and really learn along the way but of course effort is the hundred percent you have to put in effort so yeah so this is what i help them with right now because i i'm a true believer that we have to keep learning and as you get better that's when opportunities will find you a lot easier so you know work on your growth mindset work on mastering all these skills you have but most of all master being courageous being able to step up and not just being able to i guess like actually wanting to step up that's the most important thing

Starting point is 00:10:52 because a lot of the young clients that i work with it's not about whether they need to because it sounds forced and they're not actually not going to sustain. But when they come to me, it's they want to. So my question to you is, do you really want to level up? Or, you know, it sounds fun, but you're actually scared. So if you really want to, then of course, there's a lot of things that you can work on. There's a lot of things that you can improve to get yourself well positioned, right? And that is really the most important mindset and clarity that you should have before you go and take on any role at all,

Starting point is 00:11:31 whether it's a senior role, it's a peer role, it's a junior role, whatever role that is. And yeah, so that's my experience, my most challenging career choice, I think. And as I look back and I hope that you have gained some good insights. And yeah, see you soon tomorrow in my last episode of this Corporate Career Lesson Series. See ya. Bye.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep34: My job as a financial crime compliance manager.

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