The fines for financial crime regulatory breaches are costly, totaling over $6.6 billion in 2023. Banks are investing significantly to improve financial crime prevention measures to meet regulatory needs and mitigate risk, spending up to $250 million annually over the next five years.
As perpetrators become more sophisticated, it has become increasingly important for financial institutions to:
- Understand and address financial crime skill gaps to mitigate risk and avoid problems while retaining and upskilling current staff members who are difficult and costly to replace
- Benchmark their own workforce’s skillsets against the external labor market, knowledge that can gain them an advantage in the hiring and retention of specialists
- Leverage reskilling insights to assign necessary training, bridge any skills gaps identified, and track individual progress on an ongoing basis.
A European-based enterprise banking customer turned to Cornerstone Skills Transformation (then SkyHive Enterprise) for a strategic project to assess employees' anti-financial crime skills across business units. Using a set of target personas with the expected skills, employees were able to quickly assess their proficiency levels and were assigned targeted learning to close skill gaps.
Why Cornerstone?
Cornerstone Skills Transformation provides insights into the skills our client’s internal workforce already has, and also compares them to skills in demand in the wider job market, using our external labor market data. This ensures companies can align learning content with industry standards.
SkyHive by Cornerstone started by conducting a rapid skills assessment for 850 employees across 19 teams, representing 80 unique positions related to anti-financial crime. This analysis was based on anonymized employee data (CVs, job descriptions, and employee role history) to determine the baseline skills within the organization and existing role definitions.
With SkyHive by Cornerstone’s technology and framework successfully implemented, our client can now rapidly compare its workforce against industry benchmarks and identify anti-financial crime skills strengths and gaps by team and by role.
This automated, granular skills assessment will be completed on an annual basis to maintain and improve the anti-financial crime skillset. However, Cornerstone Skills Transformation can also be leveraged by other teams and departments within the institution to address their specific needs.
Implementation
The initial skills assessment and labor market benchmarking program took just eight weeks to complete, delivering exceptional time-to-value. For all subsequent years, this process will take just four weeks. The project was completed in five phases: design, data upload, assessment, gap analysis, and reskilling. This allows training programs to be rolled out continuously to address the gaps identified.
“Only 62% of participants in a recent global Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) study agree that there are sufficient skilled and trained personnel for AFC.”
Source: ACAMS, Oliver Wyman. A Global Study into Anti-Financial Crime
Outcomes & ROI
Cornerstone Skills Transformation rapidly identified the financial crime strengths, knowledge gaps, and broader skill gaps at an aggregate, business unit, team, and role level across the client’s workforce.
The ROI of this engagement for our client was significant:
- Over $3m in cost avoidance, with AI technology replacing manual analysis by internal staff or external consultants,
- Reduced risk of fines that could total $50m or more by upskilling talent to adhere more closely to anti-financial crime best practices,
- Continuous benchmarking and development of key skills both internally and compared to competitors. This is only possible through Cornerstone Skills Transformation’s solutions and automation capabilities,
- Significantly higher efficiency in Learning and Development spending through targeted training. SkyHive by Cornerstone’s client base sees an average 70% higher efficiency in L&D spending because of clarity around skill gaps,
- Increased employee engagement and retention.
