Your BSA/AML team has an open seat. The alert queue keeps growing. Your best investigator is writing SAR narratives at 9pm. And the last four resumes you saw came from people at bigger banks. Same job, more money.

There is a talent pool that many banks, credit unions, and fintechs skip. Veterans who spent four to ten years doing pattern analysis, source vetting, evidence handling, and written reporting. Not inside a bank. Inside a military intelligence shop, a criminal investigation office, or a disbursing office.

This guide is written for the person filling those seats. A BSA officer, a financial crimes hiring manager, or a recruiter who has never read a military record. It stays inside the financial crimes function. Alert adjudication, SAR quality, sanctions screening, KYC and CDD file review, and typology work. Want the wider picture on military finance talent? Start with our broader guide on how to hire veterans for finance and banking roles.

Why is the financial crimes seat so hard to fill?

Two things are happening at once. Demand keeps climbing. And every firm recruits from the same small pool of people who already hold the title.

The federal outlook data shows how fast the function is growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of financial examiners to grow 19 percent from 2024 to 2034. That is much faster than the average job. About 5,700 openings a year are projected over that decade.

So the seat is not hard to fill because the work is exotic. Every other compliance team is fishing the same pond you are. Poaching a Level 2 analyst from a competitor costs you a premium. Then that person gets poached back.

The other route is to hire the underlying skill and teach the regulation. That is where the veteran pool comes in.

What does the job actually look like day to day?

Strip the titles away. Most entry and mid level financial crimes work comes down to four products.

• Alert and case adjudication: a system flags activity. Someone reviews the customer, the history, and the money movement. Then they close it or escalate it, with a written reason.
• SAR narrative writing: the escalated cases turn into a filed report. The narrative carries the whole value of the filing.
• Sanctions and name screening triage: a screening tool throws a hit. Someone decides in minutes whether it is the sanctioned party or a common name.
• KYC, CDD, and EDD file review: someone checks the customer file and the ownership chain. Then they compare the stated purpose to what the account really does.

The clock is real. 31 CFR 1020.320 sets it. A bank must file a SAR within 30 calendar days of initial detection. If no suspect has been named, the rule allows another 30 days. It caps the delay at 60 calendar days. The same section covers transactions that involve or aggregate at least $5,000 in funds or other assets. Credit unions count as banks under this rule. Money services businesses follow 31 CFR 1022.320 instead. Their threshold is $2,000.

The program itself has a floor set by statute. 31 USC 5318(h) names four minimum parts. Internal policies, procedures, and controls. A designated compliance officer. Ongoing employee training. And an independent audit function to test the program. The bank rule at 31 CFR 1020.210 adds a fifth part. That fifth part is ongoing customer due diligence. FinCEN runs the reporting side, and your examiners will work from the interagency BSA/AML exam manual.

Go back to those four work products. None of them need a finance degree. They need judgment under a deadline and clean writing. And a person who will not close an alert just to clear the queue.

Which military backgrounds map to financial crimes work?

Four groups of military jobs map well. They map for different reasons, so screen them differently.

All source and fusion intelligence analysts

These analysts build a picture out of partial and conflicting data. They write it up. Then they defend the call to someone senior who pushes back. Army 35F and Marine 0231 live in that lane. So does Air Force 1N0X1, plus the Navy and Coast Guard IS rating.

That habit is alert adjudication and typology work. See our career guides for Army 35F Intelligence Analyst and Air Force 1N0X1 All Source Intelligence Analyst. Both show how the work is normally described.

Criminal investigators and special agents

Army 31D, Marine 5821, and Air Force 7S0X1 run real case files. Interviews, evidence handling, chain of custody, and referrals to a prosecutor. They are used to writing a report that a lawyer will read line by line.

That is the closest thing in uniform to a financial crimes investigation. The Army 31D CID Special Agent page shows the case load and the training pipeline.

Signals intelligence and counterintelligence

Army 35N and 35L work with names, aliases, and networks. So do Air Force 1N2X1 and Marine 0211. They deal with transliteration, partial name fragments, and link analysis every day. That is the exact muscle sanctions screening uses.

Many of these people have also held a clearance. Our guide on hiring a veteran whose clearance lapsed covers the reinstatement window.

Military finance, disbursing, and audit

Army 36B, Air Force 6F0X1, and Marine 3451 ran pay and travel claims. They also handled fund reconciliation. They worked under two person controls and audit trails. They closed books against a fiscal year deadline with an inspector waiting.

That discipline fits KYC and CDD file review well. The Army 36B Financial Management Technician guide lays out the daily work.

How do you read one of these resumes?

Military resumes often bury the part you care about. The job title tells you almost nothing about scope. Our guide on how to read a military job title on a resume covers the basics. The veteran resume screening guide gives you a full pass.

For a financial crimes seat, look for five specific things.

• Volume of written product: how many reports, summaries, or assessments did they write in a year? Volume proves speed.
• Quality control role: did they review other people's written work before it went up the chain? That is your future Level 2 reviewer.
• Handling of sensitive data: classified or law enforcement sensitive material builds the same instincts your privacy rules need.
• Deadline cadence: daily products beat quarterly products. A daily cycle means they can carry a queue.
• Tool exposure: link analysis, query languages, spreadsheets, or database work. Names will be unfamiliar. The habit behind them carries over.

Do not skip the evaluation reports if a candidate attaches them. They read as inflated to a civilian eye. Our piece on reading an NCOER, OER, or FITREP shows what actually signals a strong performer.

Can they write a SAR narrative? Test it before you decide.

Writing is the part that separates a good financial crimes hire from an expensive one. So test it directly.

FinCEN's own guidance on writing a complete SAR narrative says a narrative should cover five essential elements. Who, what, when, where, and why. It adds that the method of operation, the how, matters too. The bad examples in that guide keep faulting filers for skipping the why.

Give the candidate a 45 minute exercise. Use a fake customer and a fake account. Add 20 lines of made up transaction data with a structuring pattern in it. Ask for a short narrative. Do not tell them the format rules. You are testing thinking and clarity, not a template they memorized.

Score the exercise blind if you can. Strip the name off. People from intelligence and investigative backgrounds often outscore candidates with two years of bank experience.

How should you screen for sanctions and OFAC work?

Sanctions screening is mostly triage. A tool matches a name against the Specially Designated Nationals List and other lists. Then it hands a human a pile of hits. Most of those hits are not the sanctioned party. The job is to clear them fast and be right.

Two things make this harder than it sounds. Names arrive in many spellings and transliterations. And ownership matters as much as the name.

OFAC's 50 Percent Rule covers ownership. An entity is blocked when blocked persons own 50 percent or more of it. That ownership can be direct or indirect, and it adds up in the aggregate. The entity is blocked even when it never appears on a list. So a screening analyst has to follow ownership, not just match a string.

That is why signals and counterintelligence backgrounds screen well here. Alias handling and link charts were their daily work. In the interview, hand them a name with three plausible spellings and a two layer ownership chain. Ask them to talk through how they would clear or escalate it. You will learn more in ten minutes than a resume tells you in a week.

Do they need CAMS or CFE before you hire them?

Usually not for an analyst seat. Those certifications are usually earned by people already doing the work. Many firms pay the exam fee and give the new hire a window to sit it.

A better approach for a midsize bank or fintech is simple. Hire on judgment and writing. Fund the certification. Set a date. CAMS suits someone with 18 to 24 months on the job. The CFE credential needs two years of work tied to fraud detection or deterrence. So plan for year two, not the first review.

Say a certification is needed on day one. Now you are asking for someone who already holds the title. That puts you right back in the poaching pond. Midsize sanctions, fraud, and KYC teams often win a different way. They hire one level below the market and train up.

Some candidates may also bring adjacent credentials from service, like an audit or investigator qualification. Ask what the training pipeline covered. Our guide on reading military transcripts explains where those hours are recorded.

What should the first 90 days look like?

Regulation is the teachable part. Judgment is the part they bring with them. So build onboarding around the regulation and let them use the judgment they already have.

Track two numbers through that window. The edit rate on their narratives, and how many alerts they clear per day. If both move the right way by week ten, the hire worked.

Where do you find veteran candidates for these roles?

You have a few practical routes.

A veteran talent pool you can search. Best Military Resume was built for exactly this. Veterans and military spouses write civilian resumes on the platform. So intelligence, investigative, and finance backgrounds arrive already translated into plain language. The platform has built 65,000+ resumes, and it adds 1,000+ new profiles every month. You can reach the pool through the BMR hiring page.

SkillBridge, if your company qualifies. DoD SkillBridge lets a service member work at your company near the end of their service. The military keeps paying them. There is a gate that catches many firms. The DoD SkillBridge MOU, paragraph 4.1.6, sets a floor. A company must have been established as a business for at least three years to host. Federal, state, and local government offices are exempt from that rule. A company under three years old cannot host. You can make an offer during the program. Employment normally starts after the separation date. You cannot pay them before that date. Our walkthrough on becoming a SkillBridge host company covers the paperwork.

Your own network of veteran employees. If you already have veterans on staff, ask them. Referrals inside that community move fast. A small program works without a budget. Our guide on hiring veterans with no recruiting budget lays out how.

One warning on the interview itself. Veterans often undersell in the room. Many say "we" when they mean "I". That reads as low ownership to an untrained ear. Read how to interview a veteran candidate. Then read how to brief a hiring manager first.

What should you do this week?

Pick the smallest change that moves your pipeline. Four options, in order of effort.

• Rewrite one job description: move CAMS or CFE from needed to preferred. Swap "finance degree" for "or equivalent analytic experience".
• Build the writing exercise: one fake customer, 20 transaction lines, 45 minutes. Use the five scoring points above.
• Search the veteran pool: look for intelligence, investigative, and financial management backgrounds on the BMR hiring page.
• Brief your panel: ten minutes on how military records read, before the first interview.

Financial crimes teams live or die on the quality of a written call under time pressure. One group of people has done that work for years. Harder conditions, less money. They just have not written the word "SAR" on a resume yet. Want to see who is in the pool right now? Start on the BMR hiring page. For more on regulated hiring, read our guide on customs brokerage and trade compliance hiring. The analyst side is covered in hiring veterans for SOC analyst and detection roles.