ANFI study guide
ANFI · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The ANFI certification is aimed at professionals who work at the intersection of client-facing financial services and regulatory compliance - typically staff in onboarding, relationship management, operations, and financial-crime prevention roles at banks, brokerages, payment firms, and asset managers. The exam tests whether a candidate can apply a compliance framework to everyday decisions rather than merely recall definitions. The ANFI study guide has 7 sections and about 2,221 words.
01Regulatory Framework and Compliance
A candidate must understand that AML obligations sit in layers: primary legislation (which creates the offences and the duty to have controls), regulations or rules made under it (which specify the mechanics), and guidance from the supervisor (which explains how to comply in practice). Know the difference between a rule (mandatory), guidance (expected practice, not itself an offence to breach but evidence of failure), and industry best practice (aspirational).
320 words, about 2 min02Client Onboarding and Know Your Customer
Know Your Customer (KYC) is the umbrella term; customer due diligence (CDD) is the specific set of steps: identify the customer, verify identity using reliable independent sources, identify the beneficial owner, understand the purpose and intended nature of the relationship, and conduct ongoing monitoring. Enhanced due diligence (EDD) applies to higher-risk situations (politically exposed persons, correspondent relationships, high-risk jurisdictions) and involves additional measures such as source-of-funds and source-of-wealth checks and senior sign-off.
319 words, about 2 min03Anti-Money-Laundering and Financial Crime Prevention
Candidates should be able to describe placement (introducing illicit cash into the financial system), layering (obscuring the trail through transactions and entities), and integration (reintroducing funds as apparently legitimate assets). These stages are a teaching model, not a legal test - modern schemes often blend them.
335 words, about 2 min04Products and Services
Product knowledge matters because the same customer carries different risk depending on what they buy. Candidates should understand the risk profiles of: correspondent banking (high risk; requires EDD, understanding of the respondent's controls), private banking (high-value, relationship-driven, source-of-wealth questions), wire transfers (originator and beneficiary information must travel with the payment - the "travel rule"), stored-value and prepaid instruments (anonymity risk), trade finance (dual-use goods, over- and under-invoicing), and virtual assets (pseudonymity, cross-border speed, mixers).
309 words, about 2 min05Risk Assessment and Management
Risk assessment operates at three levels: enterprise-wide (the firm's business model, customer base, geography, products, channels), customer (individual or entity risk rating), and transaction (anomaly detection against expected behaviour). A credible methodology scores inherent risk, applies control effectiveness, and produces residual risk.
296 words, about 1 min06Professional Ethics and Conduct
Ethics in financial crime compliance is not abstract: it determines whether a candidate escalates an awkward finding, resists commercial pressure, and protects confidentiality appropriately. Candidates should understand the tension between customer confidentiality and the duty to report , and that confidentiality obligations do not override statutory reporting duties.
316 words, about 2 min07Reporting and Recordkeeping
Recordkeeping underpins every other control: without records, supervisors cannot verify CDD, and investigators cannot reconstruct flows. Candidates should know the categories: CDD records (identification evidence, beneficial ownership, risk rating rationale), transaction records (sufficient to reconstruct individual transactions), correspondence relating to the relationship, training records , and reports made (internal and external).
326 words, about 2 min