Mentorship is important for growth in all aspects of life, the mentor-mentee relationship is vital to the continuous evolution of the anti-money laundering (AML) and financial crimes compliance community. To be clear, coaching and mentorship are distinct practices. Coaching is essentially a short-term skill building done by a peer, designated executive or hired expert. On the other hand, mentorship involves learning strategic skills and developing qualities that are timeless. A mentor can have a protégé for life and help with all aspects of work and life.1 Steven Lindsey, a senior compliance and AML/financial crimes executive, says, “Mentoring and coaching efforts can be formal or informal. There are situations that exist where an individual needs coaching in a technical area to help build the employee’s knowledge. Mentoring is broader in nature and provides an employee a haven to ask about anything of concern or regarding their professional future.” When you boil it down, the purpose of mentoring is to help a person reduce a cloudy bunch of possibilities to a very small number of specific and articulate goals for the future.2
Coaching is very important to the daily operations and skillset of any compliance program, especially because training is one of the pillars of a Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) program. However, mentoring can help compliance professionals during all types of challenges and obstacles. Martin Feuer, a senior financial crimes compliance professional, explains the importance of mentorship to compliance programs when he says, “Whatever the reason a person decides to work in compliance that interest needs to be continuously fed and nurtured. Otherwise, after a short time we lose them. Mentorship, along with coaching, provides the best chance to keep the person in the compliance field.”