FIU Announces Direction for AML Training...Enhancing Capabilities to Respond to Transnational and Livelihood-Related Crimes

"Reorganizing into a Field-Oriented System...Reflecting Demand by Business Sector and Job Function"

The financial supervisory authorities will expand related training programs to strengthen practical response capabilities against money laundering risks. They also decided to establish a medium- to long-term roadmap for operating anti-money laundering (AML) training, based on on-site demand by business sector and job function.

On February 24, the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) announced its "2026 Direction for Operating Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorist Financing Training," which includes these measures. The aim is to strengthen financial companies' response capabilities as money laundering risks associated with transnational crimes and crimes that harm people's livelihoods become more sophisticated and diversified.

The FIU explained that, in the process of establishing this training operation direction, it focused on overhauling the overall training system so that completing the training would lead not just to an increase in training records, but to tangible improvements in the implementation of the AML regime.

First, the FIU will advance the AML training operation system based on on-site demand. Through a research project using the focus group interview (FGI) method, it will draw up an AML training operation roadmap that reflects demand by business sector and job function, and will reorganize the training system to be more field-oriented from a medium- to long-term perspective. It plans to establish a public-private consultative body, involving industry associations by sector, private training institutions, and inspection consignment institutions, so that the entire process of "training-regime implementation-inspection" can be organically linked.

The FIU will also strengthen practical response capabilities to new money laundering risks. It will expand practical training on responding to transnational crimes, including monitoring of overseas remittances and foreign exchange transactions, and internal controls at overseas branches and subsidiaries. In addition, it will revise and distribute reference typologies for suspicious transactions to improve on-site understanding of emerging money laundering techniques and standards for suspicious transaction reporting.

The FIU plans to introduce new case-based training courses tailored to the characteristics of sectors where training implementation has been weak, such as the venture investment industry, in order to narrow the gap in AML response capabilities between different sectors. During inspections, it will focus on checking whether training has been carried out for indicators that showed poor performance in last year's regime implementation assessment, and will strengthen follow-up measures to enhance effectiveness.

The FIU will also revamp the system for managing training quality and evaluating expertise. It plans to conduct regular assessments of expertise for AML certifications and specialized training courses. It will improve the evaluation indicators so that efforts to strengthen expertise, such as having AML certifications among personnel at the managerial level, are reasonably reflected in the assessment.

The FIU intends to enhance incentives for the Test of Proficiency in Anti-Money Laundering Competency (TPAC) certification and to expand opportunities for networking among experts, thereby raising social awareness of AML expertise.

An FIU official said, "We plan to establish a virtuous cycle in which both training quality and regime implementation outcomes improve together, by continuing to cooperate with relevant institutions and by monitoring training performance and feeding the results back into policy," adding, "We will actively support financial companies so that they can effectively build their capabilities to prevent money laundering."