Abi-gail Marshman

Abi-gail Marshman brings two decades of experience specialising in financial crime regulation, supervision, public sector policy and private sector compliance matters. She leads Financial Crime Compliance for The Middle East & North Africa. She has built and led AML/CFT Supervision within South Africa & the United Arab Emirates, and participated in Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) related work at a national and international level. Her expertise spans across practical implementation of effective anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, transaction monitoring, sanctions and customer due diligence control frameworks. She has played a critical role in helping to re-shape the financial crime regulatory framework in her previous role heading AML/CFT Supervision within the Central Bank of the the UAE. She brings practical experience in the application of guidelines from FATF, Wolfsberg Group, Sanctions & Counter-Proliferation Financing as well as guidance issued by the Central Bank of the UAE.

Abi-gail’s career has centered around driving regulatory change and transformation within the financial services sector, focusing on financial crime compliance. She was a core leader involved in establishing a dedicated AML/CFT Supervision function within the South African Reserve Bank and her team was responsible for imposing the first ever financial penalties in this market. She joined the Central Bank of the UAE in 2019 to again establish and lead an AML/CFT Supervisory function and drove fundamental regulatory transformation in the sector, while navigating the UAE’s national agenda on the FATF Mutual Evaluation.

Prior to Abi-gail’s strong focus as a regulator, she headed Money Laundering Control, focusing on Corporate & Investment Banking for South Africa’s largest bank with a remit across 17 jurisdictions.

Abi-gail brings a wealth of capabilities to FTI Consulting’s EMEA financial crime practice, including experience leading and managing enforcement actions and monitorships across multiple jurisdictions, digitised customer due diligence, onboarding automation and sanctions screening effectiveness testing. Additionally, Abi-gail has led financial sector thematic reviews in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to test adequacy effectiveness of both name and payment screening systems, national financial crime strategy, financial crime compliance frameworks and numerous projects on financial crime technology that cover risk assessments, sanctions, transaction monitoring systems and the reduction of false positives and alert clearing.

Abi-gail has also contributed her knowledge to academics by lecturing a post-graduate certificate in Money Laundering Control, building a Financial Crime Academy and has shaped a Risk-Based Supervisory Programme for Emirati fresh graduates.