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Tom Townson
London
Partner, Head of Financial Crime

Tom Townson

I am the partner leading the financial crime team for Grant Thornton. I have 20 years’ experience as a practitioner and as a consultant to financial service firms in the crime arena covering fraud, anti-money laundering, sanctions and conduct issues.

I have led a number of globally significant programmes that have advised on building, reviewing or improving financial crime frameworks. These programmes were primarily at firms’ subject to intensive regulatory scrutiny involving multiple jurisdictions and regulators.

Whilst I have spent a lot of time working for different types of financial services firms, my heritage lies in the insurance sector having worked for two life assurance firms and a large insurance intermediary services provider.

Recent assignments include:

  • Leading (as a secondee) a 200 FTE strong financial crime (AML, Sanctions, AB&C, Investigations) team of a large UK retail bank.
  • Leading the financial crime change programme for a division of a globally significant bank subject to a deferred prosecution agreement.
  • Leading the European leg of an independent sanctions investigation at a top 5 international bank including an end-to-end review of their approach to sanctions customer & payment screening.
  • Leading an investigation (alongside a s166) to establish the extent to which a UK based salesforce (selling insurance products) were in breach of the firms “zero tolerance” approach to fraud.

My weekends are spent enjoying time with my wife and our children.

Qualifications
  • Member of the Chartered Insurance Institute
  • FPC (Financial Planning Certificate)
  • Prince 2 Practitioner
  • MSP (Managing Successful Programmes)
  • BSc (Hons), Management Science
  • ICA International Diploma in Anti Money Laundering (Distinction)
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Tom Townson
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Partner, Head of Financial Crime
Tom Townson
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