I just want to share, what life as an AML officer like.
We are all aware that
MAS setup a special AML team following 1MDB. They are essentially going around to inspect banks, and financial institutions. Most of the bigger banks have a lot of remediation exercises, from AML, CDD, KYC, investigation, etc. This means that there are a lot of long hours to clean up existing mess that were grandfathered. Small banks are merging or sold to bigger organizations. If you are doing Compliance or AML in a smaller bank, you will likely struggle working after the merger because the work style, environment and pace are significantly different. Bonus for Compliance or AML are also never significant.
The attrition is high everywhere, because there is little work/life balance. There are a lot of movement because most of the bigger banks have their remediation exercises to clean up, and each bank are willing to pay more money, to get the bodies in to clean everything up. Once the remediation is over, you will see a lot of people being let go. This is also the reason why most banks are offering contract jobs instead of permanent roles. If you are outstanding, they will keep you to work on BAU work. If you are average performer (and you are expensive, especially if you have been moving around a few banks to get high pay), you will probably be one of those who are cut. These excludes juniors jobs that will eventually be outsourced to lower cost locations like Malaysia, India, Philippines, after the remediation are completed. Junior jobs are defined as roles that cost between $3K to $10K. In reality, most of these roles can be replaced in lower cost location. Senior management will often ask, why should they pay $5K to hire a AM or Manager, when RM$15K can get them a VP in KL, who can probably do a better job. Otherwise, they can always hire 3 AM or Managers for RM$15K, and 3 persons in Malaysia will definitely do more work than 1 person in Singapore.
This is a typical cycle of changes, so you should consider carefully, before jumping into the bandwagon.