A journey to market leadership

Risk advisory services practice grew to serve clients across U.S. and beyond

Throughout Kaufman Rossin’s 60th anniversary year, you’ll see viewpoints in this space from firm members sharing how our Joy at Work culture translates into our commitment to client relationships and service. In my story, you’ll see how we took a new consulting service and expanded it into one of the most innovative and successful lines in the firm.

It began with a mutual client

I started my career as an auditor at a Big Four firm. I was always intrigued by financial crime investigations and had moved into the forensic group, focusing on accounting investigations, money laundering and sanctions compliance. I had an opportunity to observe Kaufman Rossin’s team as they presented the results of a project for a mutual client.

Kaufman Rossin’s professionals were providing consulting services related to compliance matters, and my role was to observe the presentation and see how it affected our client. The professionals involved, including Pat Gannon, Steve Berwick and Ada Cohen, hit it out of the park. Their approach, skill and delivery of results hooked me. And this was shortly after already having been very impressed by forensic, advisory and valuation services (FAVS) practice leader Mike Elkin in another unrelated matter.

I was ready to leave the larger firm and felt I had something to add to the Kaufman Rossin team. So I joined Kaufman Rossin in 2006 with the idea of augmenting the existing FAVS service offerings with anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions investigations and compliance services. That was the birth of our risk advisory services practice.

Instead of fixing problems, why not prevent them?

We started with AML investigations and compliance services, helping financial institutions comply with regulatory orders. But as we helped clients fix issues after they’d been cited, we realized we could do more for them. Why not help them avoid issues by improving and testing their practices? We created a compliance program to periodically evaluate banks’ practices on an annual contract basis, and we got our first client.

Building market and regulator acceptance

We were building our team with the skills to help clients identify and mitigate risks, and our clients were seeing the value. But if we were going to win this game, we needed broader market acceptance and regulator confidence. We aspired to be the gold standard – the firm that regulators recognized for quality.

Ivan Garces, Chief Risk Officer of Kaufman Rossin, moderates a panel discussion at the 2022 FIBA AML Compliance Conference.

We needed to make big investments in some projects to build that brand. Even though I was very new with the firm, I got real support from management for the strategy. On our first big project we incurred far more time than the client fees that were actually billed. But we needed to really dive deep, build our process, and develop a quality work program and deliverable that would meet or exceed client and regulator expectations. The investment paid off – the client loved the work and there were no objections from the regulators. This was a win-win for us, our client and the regulators.

In addition to delivering results for our clients and gaining regulator confidence, we embarked on an aggressive awareness campaign, sharing our thought leadership. With the full backing of management and a vision for the future of our practice, we hit the road, delivering keynotes at conferences, speaking on panels, and offering seminars in key markets across the country. Team members delivered hundreds of public presentations, wrote blogs and news articles, and created videos to share our expertise.

By remaining focused on our vision and strategy centered around our people, our clients, our business and our firm, we have grown to become one of the most recognized firms in the country when it comes to AML and sanctions compliance-related work, working with financial services organizations across the U.S., Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Bank compliance was just the beginning.

As our focus on risk identification, assessment and mitigation grew, we expanded our service offerings and client types. We now help business leaders across many industries develop, implement and operationalize programs tailored to meet the unique risk management needs of their organization.

A few examples:

• Former regulators on our team help broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, private equity firms and hedge fund managers navigate Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules and regulations and stay in compliance with these and other regulations.
• We developed expert procedures to help clients understand their risks and implement programs to comply with BSA/AML and OFAC regulations. Then we expanded our team, adding data analysts and programmers, who help us analyze and interpret large data sets and create automated tools, such as the Risk Intelligence Suite by Kaufman Rossin. Now financial institutions can assess and visualize their unique risks, benchmark against peers, screen against sanction lists, and even track and respond to regulatory orders.
• Our team of nationally certified information security consultants can meet your most challenging security needs, helping you manage cyber risks as a critical and strategic business priority, not just an IT issue. Our services include training, response, assessments, compliance and even SOC reporting.
• Our team of governance professionals advise public company boards and C-suite leaders at large private companies to help them evaluate risks and offer robust practical solutions to address those risks.

We’re more than just CPAs.

Our CPA credentials are just the start of the resources we’ve assembled. What began as a sub-team in our forensic, advisory and valuation services group quickly grew and soon became the risk advisory services group – one of the fastest growing groups in the firm.

Risk Advisory Team Remote Meeting

Our team now includes a diverse range of disciplines such as CPAs, forensic accountants, AML specialists, cybersecurity specialists, data analysts and programmers, among others. They bring consulting, industry and regulatory experience from places like the Department of Homeland Security, the SEC, FINRA, United States Secret Service, Treasury and more.

We bring innovative solutions to clients with the goal of protecting and enhancing stakeholder value. We’re now the third largest group in the firm, and widely recognized nationwide and around the world for the work that we do.

The joy I’ve found creating this amazing team and serving our clients is just one example of the culture Kaufman Rossin has created over the past 60 years. Learn more about our risk advisory services practice and reach out to our team for help mitigating risks at your organization.