Pooja Lakshmi

• Conducted sanctions screening and investigations across high-velocity alert queues, evaluating 250+ critical daily matches involving retail customer bases, PEPs, and adverse media profiles.
• Investigated corporate entities and commercial accounts to identify potential sanctions evasion, dissecting intricate corporate structures, board compositions, and Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) against global watchlists.
• Applied a strict risk-based approach under demanding operational SLAs to effectively triage actionable alerts, accurately isolating true compliance risks from system-generated false positives.
• Assessed political exposure and reputational risk for high-net-worth clients and corporate leaders, auditing source of wealth and active political status in line with regulatory guidelines (OFAC, EU, UK).
• Audited wire text and transaction logs flagged by adverse keyword triggers to proactively detect payment-stripping attempts, evasive routing techniques, or hidden financial crime typologies.
• Formulated comprehensive decision rationales and case summaries, escalating validated sanctions breaches and high-risk compliance profiles to Level 2 Investigators through established internal channels.
• Maintained peak quality assurance (QA) scores while documenting detailed risk assessments, actively identifying process gaps in internal screening guidelines to enhance team-wide operational controls.

Transaction Monitoring Analyst (L1 & L2 Workflows)

• Managed Level 1 (L1) rapid-response queues, evaluating high-volume daily transaction alerts to quickly clear false positives and isolate true financial crime risks.
• Conducted Level 2 (L2) deep-dive investigations, performing advanced pattern analysis to uncover complex financial crime typologies like Account Takeover (ATO), money muling networks, Chargebacks and structuring.
• Executed advanced Customer Due Diligence (CDD/EDD) on high-risk, cross-border accounts, providing structured risk briefs to senior compliance leadership to inform decision-making.
• Compiled comprehensive case files and regulatory drafts, producing detailed narratives for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs/STRs) to support compliance and regulatory requirements.
• Applied real-time risk mitigation controls, initiating immediate account freezes and restrictions on compromised profiles to protect the financial ecosystem.
• Leveraged data analytics (Excel Macros & Pivot Tables) to transform raw transactional logs into concise risk summaries and operational trend reports, enhancing risk assessment processes.
• Served as a Subject Matter Expert (SME), providing direct guidance and peer-mentoring to a team of up to 15 analysts on dispute handling rules, and narrative writing standards.
• Supported onboarding waves as an SME Mentor, answering technical questions, auditing practice cases, and helping new hires adapt to live operational workflows to boost team-wide compliance accuracy.