The Productivity dilemma
It's 4:30pm.
You've got five alerts left in your queue. Time is running out (assuming you're one of the lucky ones who actually finishes at 5pm). You're halfway through a case and something about the customer doesn't quite feel right. You've found something that doesn't quite add up. You could easily spend another hour digging into their activity... or you could close the five remaining alerts before the end of the day.
Now you have a choice to make. You could spend another hour making sure you've reached the right outcome on the current case, or you could review the remaining five alerts and hit your productivity target, knowing that statistically they're far more likely to be false positives.
Do you prioritise the financial crime risk, or do you prioritise hitting your KPIs?
The answer might seem obvious…Of course the financial crime risk comes first. However, in reality, despite what your compliance training, company values and all-hands meetings tell you, there will almost always be operational expectations around productivity.
So what do you do? Risk missing suspicious activity because you're trying to clear your queue, or risk missing your targets because you're determined to investigate every alert in depth?
It can feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. So what's the right answer?
Before I get bombarded with comments... one quick disclaimer. As with most of my articles, I'm about to make some broad generalisations. Every financial crime team is different and I'm sure there's at least one organisation out there where productivity targets, investigative quality and unlimited resources all live together in perfect harmony. For the rest of us, this article is probably more relevant.
Why Productivity Matters
In any industry, and in almost every department of every business, productivity is important. Financial crime operations are no different.
It's equally important for managers to have reliable productivity data to understand employee and system performance, manage operational resources, set realistic expectations, identify bottlenecks and demonstrate the return on investment of financial crime controls and resource.Without that data, it becomes much harder to justify additional headcount, improve processes or understand whether the operation is performing effectively. This is also why managers and team leaders will almost always create targets, KPIs and performance measures around productivity, not just investigative ability.
Some of this data can seem straightforward. One analyst gets through 25 cases a week, another gets through 50. Does this mean Analyst A is half as productive as Analyst B? On paper, yes. But this doesn't take into account the quality of the work being produced.
If the analyst completing 50 cases is regularly failing quality assurance checks, missing financial crime risk or creating poor customer and business outcomes, then it's clear they're prioritising quantity over quality. Equally, if the team average is 40 cases per week and another analyst consistently completes only 25, there may genuinely be a performance, training or efficiency issue.
This data is also important for operational planning. If a team of 10 analysts averages 40 cases each per week, management can reasonably estimate that the team has the capacity to complete around 400 cases a week. That expectation is then used for workforce planning, budgeting and reporting to senior management.
However, if only 350 cases are completed, it's very easy to point to the analyst who completed 25 cases as the reason the target was missed, even if they consistently produced the highest-quality investigations.
The reality is that productivity is easy to measure. You know by the end of the day exactly how many cases someone has completed. Quality, missed financial crime, customer harm or regulatory issues may not become apparent for weeks or even months.
So, as an example.
It's the last week of Q2. I've got my performance review for the first half of the year coming up and I'm right on the line of hitting my productivity target. Naturally, I'm going to want to get over that line and clear as many cases as possible. Yes, there is a chance I might miss something or my investigation quality isn't quite as good as it could have been. But by the time any quality reviews, audit findings or missed financial crime come to light, my performance review has already happened.
We can all say we want to stop financial crime—and of course we do—but we also work for a living. Keeping our jobs, receiving positive performance reviews and being eligible for bonuses or promotions all matter. It's human nature to respond to the things we're measured against.
So why am I saying all of this?
Because it helps explain why managers often focus heavily on productivity KPIs. They're easier to measure, easier to compare, easier to identify when something isn't working and, generally, easier to improve.
This isn't to say managers only care about KPIs. Far from it. Most managers genuinely care about quality, customer outcomes and identifying financial crime. The challenge is that productivity is immediate, measurable and easy to compare. Investigative quality is often only fully understood weeks or even months later, once quality assurance reviews, audits or wider financial crime trends begin to emerge. Managers have their own department wide KPIs on which their own performance is judged.
But banks, fintechs and other regulated firms don't employ financial crime teams simply to process alerts. They employ them to identify suspicious activity, prevent financial loss, comply with regulatory obligations and protect customers.
If that's the case, shouldn't our greatest focus be on investigative quality and financial crime mitigation rather than simply how many alerts we can close?
The False Choice
You can clear every alert... and you can still miss financial crime.
You may clear twice as many alerts as the rest of your team, hit all your KPIs, sit at the top of the productivity leaderboard and be getting the nod about potential promotions. On paper, everything looks great.
But if you're generating customer complaints because payments were unnecessarily delayed, cutting corners and missing suspicious activity, or making incorrect decisions that lead to financial loss or reporting failures, then all you've really proved is that you've processed a lot of cases, not that you've protected the business from financial crime. Fast decisions are not always good decisions.
An effective investigation is one where the analyst has appropriately mitigated the financial crime risk and can clearly evidence how they reached the best possible business outcome. Every decision should be capable of standing up to scrutiny from Quality Assurance, Audit, senior management or, ultimately, a regulator.
Failure to conduct an effective investigation can have significant consequences, including:
Financial loss through fraud reimbursements, regulatory fines or customer compensation.
Customer dissatisfaction, leading to complaints and reduced trust.
Regulatory action, including fines, licence restrictions or enforcement action.
Reputational damage. Who wants to bank with an organisation known for allowing fraud through the door? (Apart from the fraudsters.)
Poor job satisfaction. Most of us want to feel we've made a difference, not simply tick another box.
Wider societal harm. Failing to identify and report suspicious activity may allow organised crime, human trafficking or terrorist financing to continue unchecked.
Slower personal development. Cutting corners don't just increase business risk—they also limit your own learning and investigative judgement.
Some of those examples may sound extreme, but that's also one of the most rewarding aspects of working in financial crime.The payment you stop today, or the SAR you help generate, could contribute to dismantling an organised crime group, protecting vulnerable people or preventing future victims. The impact of our work often extends far beyond the individual alert sitting in front of us.
Whilst productivity may sometimes feel like the easier and, from a personal perspective, safer, option, the consequences of sacrificing quality for quantity can be significant for both the business and your own career.
This is exactly why analysts often feel more immediate pressure around productivity than investigative quality. Daily productivity figures are visible to everyone, whereas the consequences of a poor investigation may not become apparent until much later.
Every compliance training session, town hall and message from senior leadership will rightly emphasise protecting customers, identifying financial crime and making sound risk-based decisions. However, on the operational floor, analysts can often feel more immediate pressure to achieve their productivity targets because those metrics are visible every single day.
So, in an ideal world, we'd simply have both quality and quantity. But is that actually possible?
Work Smarter, Not harder
I love a cliché... but this is where many analysts fall into the trap of thinking they have to choose between productivity and effectiveness.
But the best investigators don't optimise for one at the expense of the other. They understand that not every alert deserves the same amount of time. Some investigations are straightforward; the evidence is clear and spending another 30 minutes won't change the outcome. Others contain a small inconsistency, an unexplained payment or a customer response that simply doesn't sit right. In those cases, another five or ten minutes could completely change the direction of the investigation. The difficult part is knowing the difference, and that's where judgement comes in.
Unfortunately, judgement isn't something you can learn from a procedure document or compliance training module. It develops from experience, seeing thousands of cases, understanding customer behaviour, learning how your products work and recognising the techniques criminals use.
What many people call "gut instinct" is often just experience recognising a pattern before your brain has consciously explained it. Your instinct tells you where to look and your investigation tells you whether you're right. That's why the best analysts don't just identify unusual activity, they learn to recognise activity that is both unusual and genuinely risky.
"But how am I supposed to build that experience if I'm constantly being pushed to hit productivity targets?"
It's a fair question.
The answer isn't to spend an extra hour investigating every alert. If you do that, you'll almost certainly miss your productivity targets and quickly lose the trust of your manager. Equally, if your only focus is clearing the queue as quickly as possible, you'll limit your own development because you'll never take the time to understand why a case was suspicious, why a decision was made or what you could learn from it.
The analysts who develop the fastest aren't necessarily the ones with the lightest workloads. They're the ones who are intentional about their learning. They know when to move on from a straightforward case, but they also recognise the investigations that are worth investing a little extra time in. They ask questions, seek feedback, review quality assurance comments, discuss complex cases with experienced colleagues and actively look for patterns.
Over time, those small investments compound into something procedures can't teach: judgement.
Of course, it's easy for someone with experience to say all of this. If you're new to financial crime, you're probably wondering how you're expected to show judgement and instinct whilst still trying to hit your KPIs.
So how do you demonstrate experience before you've had the chance to build it?
Let's look at some practical ways you can start standing out from day one.
Stand Out by Working Smarter
The first thing to understand is that career progression in any industry requires effort. Whilst producing efficient, high-quality investigations is important, so is demonstrating that you're someone who can be relied upon.
The truth is that the people who progress are rarely the ones doing the bare minimum. Whether that's staying a little later to finish an important investigation, volunteering for a project outside their day job, helping a colleague or spending time learning new typologies, there will almost certainly be times where you invest more into your career than your contracted hours require. Whether that's right or wrong is a debate for another day, but it's the basis of many successful careers.
The important thing is to make sure that time is valuable to both you and the business. If you're regularly starting early, finishing late and working through lunch but still not meeting expectations, that's not commitment, it's a sign that something isn't working.
The goal isn't simply to work harder. It's to work smarter.
One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give is to spend time with the people who are already where you want to be.
There will always be people in every team for whom the job is simply a job. They come in, hit their targets, go home and have little interest in developing further. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that if that's what they want.However, if you're reading this article, I'm guessing your ambitions are different.
Instead of copying the person who has become comfortable, identify the analysts and managers who consistently produce good work, hit their targets, talk passionately about financial crime and are trusted by the business. They've already demonstrated they know how to balance productivity with quality, so learn from them. Ask questions. Observe how they investigate. Find out how they prioritise their workload. Every organisation is different, so whilst I can only give general advice, the best people to learn from are often sitting a few desks away.
Understand the product. Understand the typologies. Understand the risks.
One of the best questions you can ask yourself is:
"If I wanted to abuse this product, how would I do it without being detected?"
The more suspicious activity you investigate, the easier this becomes. A current account doesn't present the same risks as a credit card. A retail customer behaves very differently from a business customer. Understanding how criminals are likely to exploit a specific product means you stop looking for every possible typology and start looking for the ones that genuinely make sense.
Master the basics and don't stop learning.
Your induction training will almost certainly teach you the common typologies. Learn them. More importantly, understand how they apply to your particular role. Placement, layering and integration look very different in a retail bank compared to a mortgage lender or a payments company.
But make sure the learning continues on an ongoing basis. Take notes. Review interesting investigations. Ask your manager for examples of well-written escalations or SAR referrals. Learn from other people's cases as well as your own. Every investigation is an opportunity to build your pattern recognition.
The Morning Risk Scan
My biggest practical tip is case prioritisation.
This won't be possible in every organisation, depending on how your systems allocate work, but if you have visibility of your queue, use it.
Rather than diving straight into the first case, spend the first 20–30 minutes of your day carrying out a quick, high-level review of every alert in your queue.You're not trying to investigate them. You're simply looking for early red flags and green flags.
For example:
A customer of 10 years with consistent behaviour who has triggered a single slightly higher-than-normal payment may initially look lower risk.
A brand-new customer using a virtual office address, questionable KYC documentation and sending multiple high-value round-figure payments probably deserves your attention first.
At the end of your review, rank your cases from highest to lowest risk and make a few notes explaining why.
This approach has three advantages:
The highest-risk cases are reviewed first, meaning that if you run out of time, you're more likely to have lower-risk alerts remaining.
You gain an overview of your workload, making it much easier to plan where your time will have the greatest impact.
You'll often identify quick wins that can be resolved efficiently, helping both your productivity and your workload.
Ironically, spending 20 or 30 minutes not investigating often leads to better investigations and higher productivity for the rest of the day.
It's not a perfect system, and it doesn't mean cutting corners. Lower risk doesn't mean "not suspicious," and higher risk doesn't automatically mean financial crime. It simply gives you a structured way of managing your workload so that you're spending your time where it is most likely to make a difference.
Good investigators don't just manage their cases. They manage their time according to risk.
Taken individually, none of these ideas are revolutionary. However, together they create a structured approach to managing one of the biggest challenges in financial crime operations: balancing productivity with effectiveness.
The aim isn't to investigate every case for as long as possible, nor is it to clear your queue as quickly as possible. It's about making informed decisions on where your time will have the greatest impact. By understanding your products, recognising the typologies most relevant to your role, learning from experienced colleagues and prioritising your workload based on risk, you begin to use your time far more effectively. Ironically, that often leads to both better investigations and better productivity.
It's also important to recognise that, particularly early in your career, hitting your KPIs matters.
Whether we like it or not, managers generally want an easy life. In other words, they want analysts they don't have to worry about. People who consistently hit their productivity targets, identify genuine financial crime risk, produce good-quality investigations and don't create unnecessary complaints or operational headaches. That's what reliability looks like.
Reliability is often what earns trust. Once your manager knows they can depend on you, they're far more likely to involve you in projects, ask for your opinion, give you more complex investigations and recommend you for progression opportunities.
But being reliable is only half the story.
If you really want to accelerate your career, you need to do more than consistently manage productivity and investigative quality. You need to demonstrate that you're thinking beyond your own queue, improving the wider operation and taking a proactive approach to financial crime.
That's where the analysts who progress fastest begin to separate themselves from everyone else.
Going Beyond Your Queue
By this point, you've shown that you can be trusted. You consistently balance productivity with investigative quality, understand your products, manage your workload and make sound risk-based decisions. That's what makes you a reliable analyst.
However, reliability alone won't always be enough to separate you from everyone else. The analysts who progress quickest are usually the ones who don't just improve themselves, they improve the team around them.
A good place to start is by looking at the improvements you've made to your own way of working.
Perhaps you've developed a prioritisation method that helps you identify higher-risk cases more efficiently. Don't keep it to yourself. Turn it into a simple framework and share it with your manager or wider team. If it genuinely improves productivity or investigative quality, you've demonstrated far more value than simply processing another 20 alerts.
Maybe you've noticed that a particular typology appears repeatedly in escalated cases. Pull the data together. Look for common behaviours, customer profiles or transaction patterns and present your findings. It doesn't need to be a 50-page report. Even a short summary of what you've observed can help other analysts identify similar activity more quickly.
If you've benefited from experienced colleagues taking the time to help you, pay it forward. Volunteer to support new starters, share investigation techniques or explain the thought process behind your decisions. Teaching someone else is one of the fastest ways to strengthen your own understanding.
The same applies to process improvements. If you're repeatedly seeing the same false positives, unnecessary manual steps or recurring investigation issues, don't just complain about them. Gather evidence. Measure the impact. Suggest a better approach. Managers are far more likely to support an improvement that's backed by data than one that's based purely on opinion.
None of these ideas are about trying to impress people. They're about making your own job easier first, then using what you've learned to help everyone else perform better. That's the type of contribution managers remember.
You start by demonstrating reliability through consistently balancing productivity and effectiveness. Once you've earned that trust, you begin sharing knowledge, improving processes and helping the wider team succeed.
That's no longer just good performance. That's leadership.
Master your queue. Build your judgement. Share your knowledge. Improve the operation.
That's what Beyond the Alert is all about.
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