Maria Lingham

Director, Forensic

KPMG in Bermuda

Maria is a subject matter specialist in Financial Crime, Anti‑Money Laundering (AML), Anti-Bribery and Corruption (ABC), Sanctions, Fraud Risk Management (FRM), and financial investigations. She has over 17 years of Financial Crime (FC) Compliance experience working with KPMG in Bermuda, KPMG UK, and a bank in Bermuda, including in-house experience as Head of Financial Crime Compliance, Compliance Officer, and Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO).

Professional and Industry Experience

  • Leading a bank’s Financial Crime Compliance (AML, ABC, Sanctions, CDD and Transaction Monitoring) function.
  • Building and overseeing the FC Risk and Governance framework (FC Risk Assessments, P&Ps, testing, transaction monitoring, and all other aspects of the framework).
  • Regular BMA reporting and discussions.
  • Developing controls to meet all regulatory requirements.
  • Enterprise Wide Risk Assessments.
  • FC Compliance training to staff and Board of Directors.
  • Chair of the Bermuda Banking Association Compliance Committee.
  • Working directly with regulators – secondments and projects:
    • Managing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Anti-Terrorist Financing (ATF) onsite review visits on behalf of the regulators.
    • Leading desk top Policies and Procedures (P&P) review.
  • Assisting Insurance, Banking, DABA, CSP and Trusts clients with regulatory requirements on a variety of projects:
    • Leading AML Customer Due Diligence (CDD) remediations.
    • Drafting and reviewing AML/ATF frameworks and P&P for compliance with the regulation and advising on changes.
    • Customer risk ratings process and requirements.
    • Source of Fund (SoF) and Source of Wealth (SoW), Transaction Monitoring, Sanctions, Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR).
    • AML audits and risk assessments.
    • Training MLROs in Bermuda, and advising and training board of directors on regulatory compliance in Bermuda.
    • Compliance with the new Bribery Act 2016 – Risk Assessments, P&P and training staff.
    • Fraud Risk Management (FRM) and Investigations.
    • Global unauthorized trading investigation.
    • Sanctions investigations for compliance with international regulation.

  • Executive Leadership, Yale, USA

  • Association of Certified Sanctions Specialists, OFAC, USA

  • International Compliance Association (ICA) Anti-Money Laundering Diploma, UK

  • Induction of Finance and Accounting training, KPMG UK

  • MA History of Arts, BA History of Arts, National Art Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria

  • Accredited Counter Fraud Specialist (ACFS), University of Portsmouth, UK