Noel Brandt

Noel Brandt is a Managing Director in the Data and Analytics practice within the Forensic & Litigation Consulting segment at FTI Consulting. Mr. Brandt has decades of practical experience in Financial Crimes Compliance, AML, Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) Compliance, Counter Financing of Terrorism (“CFT”), Government Sanctions and Consumer Protection. He also has extensive experience working with multijurisdictional regulators and central banks in program and systems defense, negotiations and program sustainability testing. He successfully remediated multiple government settlements from inception to completion, including consent orders, government settlements, Deferred Prosecution Agreements and legal resolutions across multiple countries.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Brandt founded and operated his advisory firm, High Ground Advisory LLC, where he drew on his previous corporate experience and direct program oversight expertise. Before founding his company, he served as Global Head of Compliance Analytics, Data Science and Systems at The Western Union Company, where he oversaw global AML/CFT and anti-customer fraud compliance technical processes, including risk-based data analysis, analytics, systems, control design, machine learning and modeling. He also directed the systems and technical design of the company’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (“OFAC”) and other government sanctions compliance programs. His responsibilities included oversight of multiple systems used by the global Compliance department to execute its risk-based program to mitigate risk in the money transfer, payments and banking business lines. Mr. Brandt also managed the systems that support global subpoena, law enforcement and other government requests.

Mr. Brandt has more than 20 years of compliance experience across his firm, The Western Union Company and First Data Corporation (now a Fiserv company). He has managed teams of more than 100 people in complex corporate environments under intense regulatory scrutiny. The terrorism financing detection program designed and developed under his leadership was designated as a Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology and approved for a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology SAFETY Act Designation. Additionally, Mr. Brandt has been awarded multiple U.S. patents in the compliance and technology space.

Mr. Brandt’s primary areas of experience include technology and analytics strategy, with extensive experience developing detection models to identify activity tied to various predicate criminal activities that use financial institutions to obscure the underlying source and purpose of funds. His other areas of focus include examination/audit and enforcement remediation, Transactions Monitoring Program assessment, BSA Program review, Compliance Technology evaluation and recommendations and Proprietary Technology/Applications integrity analysis.

Mr. Brandt’s formal education includes two M.B.A.s in Accounting and Finance with honors and International Business with honors, both from Regis University’s Anderson College of Business and Computing. He also holds a B.A. in Business Administration, summa cum laude, and is an elected member of the Alpha Chi National Honor Scholarship Society.

Relevant Experience:

• Served as the Global Head of Compliance Analytics, Data Science and Systems at The Western Union Company
• Successfully led the Compliance Systems and Analytics and the Risk Assessment and Strategy departments at The Western Union Company
• Implemented effective transactions monitoring and regulatory reporting program in more than 50 countries
• Leveraged advanced analytics, data science and technical expertise to assess, design and execute end-to-end solutions that became recognized industry models for AML, government sanctions compliance and consumer protection
• Spearheaded successful $586 million U.S. Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission settlement, avoiding legal pitfalls
• Enabled multifactor modelling capabilities that scaled risk factor process more than twentyfold to protect customers and detect financial crimes
• Built a Data Science Division and launched a real-time AI/machine learning computing platform, including big data feature computation capabilities that prevented up to 20,000 fraud scams per month, among other benefits