Top 12 AML Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the intricate field of anti-money laundering (AML), a resume that actually signals skill—not fluff—wins interviews. What matters most? Concrete capabilities that show you can spot patterns, weigh risk, and turn messy data into defensible decisions. The twelve skills below form a practical backbone for analysts who face evolving threats across traditional banking, fintech, and crypto rails.

AML Analyst Skills

1. Transaction Monitoring
2. KYC Compliance
3. Risk Assessment
4. SAR Filing
5. SQL
6. Excel
7. Data Analysis
8. Regulatory Knowledge
9. Blockchain Analysis
10. Python
11. Financial Crime
12. Customer Due Diligence

1. Transaction Monitoring

Transaction monitoring is the ongoing review of customer activity—real-time and post-event—across products, channels, and geographies to surface patterns that may signal money laundering, sanctions evasion, or fraud. It blends rules, behavior models, and investigator judgment.

Why It's Important

It’s the early-warning radar for AML programs. Good monitoring cuts through noise, flags genuine risk, and supports timely escalation and reporting. Done poorly, it drowns teams in false positives and blinds the institution to real exposure.

How to Improve Transaction Monitoring Skills

1. Tune scenarios regularly: Refresh thresholds, segment customers, and align typologies with current risks. Calibrate using back-testing and investigator feedback.

2. Use advanced analytics: Layer in behavioral analytics, network analysis, and explainable machine learning. Validate models and document assumptions.

3. Fix data at the source: Standardize, deduplicate, and enrich with KYC attributes, geolocation, and sanctions data. Bad data equals bad alerts.

4. Close the loop: Feed case outcomes back into tuning. Hold typology reviews and quality checks to sharpen precision and recall.

5. Measure what matters: Track alert quality (hit rate), time to disposition, escalation ratios, and SAR conversion. Govern changes with version control.

6. Train consistently: Keep analysts current on emerging red flags, layering typologies, and countermeasures used by criminals.

How to Display Transaction Monitoring Skills on Your Resume

2. KYC Compliance

KYC (Know Your Customer) is the foundation of onboarding and ongoing oversight. It verifies identity, understands customer purpose and behavior, and gauges risk—so financial services aren’t misused for illicit aims.

Why It's Important

Strong KYC stops bad actors at the gate and keeps customer risk profiles real over time. It supports credible monitoring, smart escalation, and clean audit trails.

How to Improve KYC Compliance Skills

1. Strengthen onboarding: Verify identity rigorously, capture beneficial ownership, and understand the nature and purpose of the relationship. Factor in the U.S. Corporate Transparency Act beneficial ownership reporting obligations where relevant.

2. Adopt a risk-based approach: Apply CDD for most customers and EDD for higher-risk profiles (PEPs, high-risk geographies, complex structures). Document rationale.

3. Monitor continuously: Refresh profiles on a schedule and when triggers arise (unusual activity, adverse media, ownership changes).

4. Screen with discipline: Sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media screening need clear disposition rules, evidence, and auditability.

5. Harden data controls: Maintain data lineage, standardized taxonomies, and retention that meets regulatory timelines.

6. Test and train: Run QA on files, perform periodic independent reviews, and keep staff sharp on new rules and typologies.

How to Display KYC Compliance Skills on Your Resume

3. Risk Assessment

Risk assessment identifies and evaluates how money laundering and terrorist-financing risks arise from customers, products, geographies, and delivery channels—then weighs controls to determine residual risk.

Why It's Important

It directs resources to the highest threats, informs monitoring coverage, and demonstrates a credible risk-based approach to regulators and auditors.

How to Improve Risk Assessment Skills

1. Build a clear taxonomy: Define inherent risks by customer type, product, geography, and channel. Score consistently and transparently.

2. Use data, not guesswork: Pull volumes, trends, alert outcomes, SAR conversion, and control effectiveness into scoring.

3. Map scenarios to risks: Link monitoring coverage to top inherent risks; close gaps and retire low-value scenarios.

4. Update when things change: New products, mergers, market shifts, or regulatory updates should trigger reassessment.

5. Collaborate and challenge: Partner with front-line, operations, and technology. Seek independent validation.

6. Report with clarity: Document methodology, assumptions, and controls. Brief senior management and the board in plain language.

How to Display Risk Assessment Skills on Your Resume

4. SAR Filing

SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) filing is the formal notification to authorities when activity suggests money laundering, terrorist financing, or related crimes. It hinges on facts, timing, and a clear narrative.

Why It's Important

High-quality SARs inform law enforcement, protect the financial system, and satisfy core regulatory duties. Slack reporting erodes trust and invites penalties.

How to Improve SAR Filing Skills

1. Master the narrative: Tell a clean story—who, what, when, where, why, and how. Include amounts, dates, accounts, typology, and the reason activity is suspicious.

2. File on time: In the U.S., file within 30 calendar days of initial detection if a subject is identified, up to 60 days if not. File promptly for urgent or ongoing threats. For continuing activity, submit follow-ups typically within 120 days.

3. Use relevant keywords: Align to typologies and patterns so the report is findable and useful.

4. Keep records, avoid tipping off: Retain evidence and workpapers. Never disclose SAR filings to customers or unauthorized parties.

5. Quality control: Peer review complex cases, standardize checklists, and monitor SAR conversion and feedback.

6. Leverage tooling: Use case management to pre-fill data, attach exhibits, and maintain audit trails.

How to Display SAR Filing Skills on Your Resume

5. SQL

SQL is the language of relational data. It lets analysts retrieve, join, and shape large transaction datasets to uncover patterns and anomalies.

Why It's Important

Most AML evidence lives in databases. Strong SQL turns raw records into clear signals—velocity spikes, structuring behavior, circular flows, or networked entities.

How to Improve SQL Skills

1. Go beyond basics: Master joins, window functions, CTEs, conditional aggregation, and date/time handling.

2. Clean and standardize: Normalize data, handle duplicates, and harmonize entity identifiers for reliable analysis.

3. Tune performance: Read execution plans, index smartly, partition big tables, and use set-based logic.

4. Think AML patterns: Write queries for structuring, smurfing, velocity, round-tripping, and geographic risk indicators.

5. Engineer features: Create rolling sums, peer-group benchmarks, and flags that feed monitoring or models.

6. Standardize code: Adopt naming conventions, peer reviews, and reusable snippets for repeatable investigations.

How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume

6. Excel

Excel is the fast, flexible workbench for slicing data, building quick checks, and producing investigator-ready summaries.

Why It's Important

When you need answers now, Excel delivers—triage, ad hoc analysis, and crisp visuals that make decisions easier to defend.

How to Improve Excel Skills

1. Use modern functions: XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, dynamic arrays (FILTER, UNIQUE, SORT), TEXTSPLIT, and XMATCH speed investigation work.

2. Summarize smartly: PivotTables and PivotCharts expose trends and outliers quickly.

3. Automate the grind: Power Query for ingestion and transformation; Power Pivot (DAX) for models; macros or Office Scripts for repetitive steps—with controls and approvals.

4. Control quality: Data validation, conditional formatting, and protection reduce errors during triage.

5. Analyze statistically: Use the Analysis ToolPak for correlations, regressions, and distribution checks when appropriate.

6. Make it repeatable: Template common reviews, document steps, and track versions.

How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume

7. Data Analysis

Data analysis in AML means turning raw transactions, customer context, and external signals into insight: unusual behavior, risk concentrations, and credible stories.

Why It's Important

It separates noise from threat. Strong analysis builds cases that stand up to scrutiny—internal and external.

How to Improve Data Analysis Skills

1. Start with a hypothesis: Define what “normal” looks like. Compare cohorts and peer groups. Hunt for drift.

2. Visualize with intent: Use clear charts, avoid clutter, and highlight the signal. Let the picture carry the argument.

3. Apply the right methods: Time-series checks, clustering, anomaly detection, and supervised models where data supports it.

4. Validate rigorously: Back-test, check stability, and watch for bias or data leakage. Document limitations.

5. Make it reproducible: Keep code, parameters, and datasets versioned. Someone else should be able to rerun your work.

6. Add context: Blend internal KYC with external signals (where permissible) to explain the “why,” not just the “what.”

How to Display Data Analysis Skills on Your Resume

8. Regulatory Knowledge

Regulatory knowledge is familiarity with AML/CFT laws, guidance, and expectations across jurisdictions—how they’re interpreted, examined, and enforced.

Why It's Important

It keeps programs compliant, controls relevant, and leadership informed. When rules shift, your program should move with them.

How to Improve Regulatory Knowledge Skills

1. Track changes proactively: Monitor updates like FATF guidance, the EU AML package, UK MLR amendments, and U.S. AMLA/Corporate Transparency Act rollout (including beneficial ownership reporting).

2. Map rules to controls: Maintain a living matrix linking requirements to policies, procedures, and evidence.

3. Drive change management: Formalize impact assessments, timelines, owners, and testing before go-live.

4. Train and certify: Pursue recognized AML certifications and refresh knowledge through workshops and industry forums.

5. Be exam-ready: Keep an evidence library, metrics, and board reporting tight and up to date.

How to Display Regulatory Knowledge Skills on Your Resume

9. Blockchain Analysis

Blockchain analysis examines on-chain activity to identify flows, counterparties, and risk—across exchanges, mixers, bridges, DeFi protocols, and more.

Why It's Important

Crypto is borderless and fast. Tracing funds through wallets and chains helps spot laundering patterns, sanction evasion, and fraud, then ties them back to real-world actors where possible.

How to Improve Blockchain Analysis Skills

1. Know the tech: Understand UTXO versus account-based models, address clustering, taint analysis, and chain-hopping behavior.

2. Use the right tools: Combine block explorers with commercial analytics where available. Preserve screenshots, hashes, and timestamps.

3. Focus on high-risk behaviors: Mixers, privacy features, peel chains, cross-chain bridges, and DeFi liquidity hops demand extra scrutiny.

4. Connect off-chain dots: Link on-chain evidence with KYC, open-source intelligence, and known service designations. Monitor Travel Rule obligations where applicable.

5. Document relentlessly: Record methods, assumptions, and limitations. Maintain legal holds and reproducible trails.

How to Display Blockchain Analysis Skills on Your Resume

10. Python

Python is the glue for data work—ingesting, cleansing, analyzing, visualizing, and automating AML workflows.

Why It's Important

With the right libraries, you can accelerate investigations, scale analytics, and reduce manual grind—without sacrificing auditability.

How to Improve Python Skills

1. Master the core stack: Pandas and NumPy for data wrangling; Matplotlib/Seaborn for visuals; Polars for speed when needed.

2. Add ML where useful: Scikit-learn, XGBoost, or LightGBM for classification and anomaly detection. Keep models explainable and validated.

3. Analyze networks: Use NetworkX to map entities, intermediaries, and fund flows.

4. Automate safely: Build scheduled jobs for data pulls, file parsing, and enrichment—with logging, testing (pytest), and access controls.

5. Write production-friendly code: Clear functions, docstrings, and reproducible notebooks or scripts. Version everything.

6. Practice with realistic data: Create synthetic datasets that mirror AML patterns and edge cases.

How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume

11. Financial Crime

Financial crime spans money laundering, sanctions evasion, fraud, bribery, corruption, tax crimes, and more. AML analysts work at the intersection—detecting, disrupting, and reporting.

Why It's Important

Criminals adapt. Programs that don’t keep pace become soft targets. Analysts who understand evolving schemes protect institutions and the broader system.

How to Improve Financial Crime Skills

1. Track typologies: Mule networks, BEC, romance scams, trade-based laundering, sanctions evasion, APP fraud, crypto-related fraud—keep a living playbook.

2. Build airtight cases: Timelines, transaction maps, entity resolution, and quantified exposure. Cite evidence, not hunches.

3. Adopt a risk-based lens: Focus on segments with the greatest potential impact. Adjust coverage as patterns shift.

4. Collaborate across teams: Fraud, cyber, sanctions, and legal often hold critical pieces of the puzzle.

5. Measure outcomes: Track SAR impact, recoveries, and control improvements driven by investigations.

How to Display Financial Crime Skills on Your Resume

12. Customer Due Diligence

Customer Due Diligence (CDD) gathers and maintains the facts needed to assess risk—identity, beneficial ownership, purpose and nature, expected activity, and where appropriate, source of funds or wealth.

Why It's Important

CDD powers effective monitoring and defensible decisions. Without accurate, current profiles, even the best tools stumble.

How to Improve Customer Due Diligence Skills

1. Collect what counts: Identity verification, beneficial ownership, and business purpose—aligned to regulatory requirements, including beneficial ownership reporting developments.

2. Risk-score thoughtfully: Combine static factors (PEP status, geography) with dynamic behavior. Review on schedule and on events.

3. Screen continuously: Sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media with clear escalation paths and documentation.

4. Use digital identity where allowed: Biometrics, liveness checks, and trusted data sources can improve accuracy and speed.

5. Test and audit: Quality checks on files, independent reviews, and remediation tracking keep standards high.

6. Retain evidence properly: Follow jurisdictional record-keeping timelines and ensure traceability.

How to Display Customer Due Diligence Skills on Your Resume