“My job consists of detecting all types of wrongdoing from our clients or third parties”
Discover our Qonto Insiders of the month: Khadra Mahamud, Lead AML (Anti Money Laundering) / CFT (Countering the Financing of Terrorism), at Qonto.
1. What did you do before joining Qonto (your education, professional experience, etc.)?
I grew up in Strasbourg and decided to move to Lille in order to join the EDHEC Business School and follow the BBA (Bachelor in Business Administration). In my 2nd year of BBA, I participated in a class called « Economic crime risk management », that’s when I discovered my appetite for organized crime and the underground economy.
After some research made, I decided to make the rest of my studies to end up working in a Financial Crime related job. I chose to make my last year of studies an LLM in Law & Tax Management at EDHEC. Some of my classes specialized in Compliance & Financial Crime.
I wanted to work abroad, especially in Germany, which is why I started a job at CACEIS Bank Germany located in Munich. I worked there for 4 years as a compliance officer, and I loved it. After 4 years, I needed some new challenges and also wanted to go back to France. So I applied to Qonto and it was a great decision!
2. Why did you join Qonto?
I wanted to continue working in Compliance and in the financial industry. So I looked up jobs in FinTech. Indeed, I wanted to have a big change and work for a young dynamic company. When looking for all the job descriptions online, I was directly appealed by Qonto! Indeed, the value of the company, the job description, and the tasks described were so interesting. I did not want to move to Paris, but when I thought about the description of the position and Qonto as a company, I decided to give it a try… and here I am today!
3. How would you summarize the recruitment process?
The recruitment process was so quick! I applied and 10 days after, I had an offer! The recruiter I had was amazing. She was available between interviews to answer my questions through WhatsApp or email. In addition, I got the chance to have good discussions with Leads and agents from the team.
4. What stood out for you about the onboarding process?
The first week of onboarding was focused on Qonto. I thought this was a fantastic experience and learning! Indeed, it helps you understand from the start: the product, the company culture, the different departments, and how they work. That makes a huge difference! The onboarding in the AML (Anti Money Laundering) team was also very interesting: I had several shadowing agents from the team to explain to me how they work and help me improve continuously.
5. Tell us about what you do as an AML/CFT Manager at Qonto.
I had the role of AML/CFT Manager for a year and it was a good opportunity and experience! As an AML/CFT Manager, I was active in many different tasks: analyzing accounts and treating alerts from our transaction monitoring tool, working on complex cases, improving processes and procedures, helping new joiners grow within the team, and participating in various projects. After a year in the position of Manager, I became the team Lead of the German AML team (so 2 years after I joined the company).
6. What are the qualities required to be a successful AML/CFT Manager?
Curiosity is an important quality! As our job requires us to analyze cases, detect patterns, and follow the trends in terms of fraud and money laundering, being curious is highly helpful for the job. Another essential quality that is required is analytic skills. Indeed, analyzing accounts and flows is the main task.
7. How would you summarize your day-to-day life as part of the Qonto AML/CFT team?
We have a team of 45 agents (cross-market), which is great because I met a lot of colleagues with the same passion of mine: fight against fraud! Aside from the excellent teamwork we are doing on a daily basis, there is a very nice working environment and team mood. That is the reason why I am happy to go to work each morning, along with the fact that dealing with Fraud and AML topics is one of my passion in life.
8. You are working in a cross-functional team. Can you tell us about the stakes involved?
As an AML team, we work with lots of teams including banking operations, onboarding, customer success, financial security, risk, data team, talent acquisition, and many more. Indeed, as AML is often impacted by other teams’ processes or new implementations, we are working closely with all of those teams. To give you some concrete examples: we work with the Data & Risk team to define new alerts whenever we detect new types of fraud, or we also work with the Talent Acquisition team in order to staff our team with the brightest people.
9**. Which of Qonto’s 4 values (Ambition, Mastery, Teamwork, Integrity) resonates with you the most and why?**
Without surprise: Integrity! Indeed, the job of an AML officer consists of detecting all types of wrongdoing from our clients or from third parties towards Qonto or their clients.
10. If you could speak to potential future Qonto candidates, what would you tell them?
If a candidate wants to work in a dynamic environment, on interesting topics, is curious, and wants to fight fraudsters: AML is definitely the team he should apply to!
11. Do you have a fun anecdote you would like to share about your time at Qonto?
Working in AML can be quite a fun journey. Indeed, we detect lots of fraud on a daily basis. From time to time, we are receiving detailed police report that gives us plenty of detail on the fraud that happened.
One of the craziest cases I had to deal with, was a victim who thought being caught by the police for pedo-porn viewing online. He simply received an email (with lots of grammar mistakes), informing him about this and asking him to pay a fine. Of course, it was not the police who contacted him but this was only a fraudster who was scamming him. After a back-and-forth exchange between the fraudster (faking being the police) and the victim, we detected some unusual transactions on our client’s account (being here the fraudster) and were able to stop more losses for the victim.
