International Compliance Association
The International Compliance Association (ICA) is a professional body for people who work in regulatory compliance and in the prevention of financial crime. ICA has supported this profession since 2001 with qualifications, short courses and a membership program, and it counts more than 30,000 members in 155 countries.
Members of ICA work in compliance and financial crime prevention at banks, insurers and other regulated firms, from first-line staff to heads of compliance. Its qualifications cover anti money laundering, sanctions, KYC, governance, risk and compliance and are awarded together with Alliance Manchester Business School of the University of Manchester. ICA belongs to the British training and information group Wilmington plc.
Qualifications from certificate to postgraduate diploma
ICA qualifications have five levels: introductory certificates, specialist certificates, advanced certificates, diplomas and professional postgraduate diplomas. Above them sits an MSc top-up in financial crime and compliance in digital societies. The certificate levels follow the Regulated Qualifications Framework of England, and the levels from the advanced certificate upward follow the benchmarks of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
The introductory ICA Certificate in Compliance explains why regulation exists and what a compliance function does, takes about two months and leads to the designation Cert(Comp). Diplomas exist for anti money laundering, for governance, risk and compliance, for managing sanctions risk and for financial crime prevention. The postgraduate diplomas at executive level cover financial crime compliance and governance, risk and compliance.
Course fees and membership costs
The ICA Certificate in Compliance costs 765 pounds, 860 euros or 1,030 US dollars, plus local taxes. Learners who are not yet members also pay for twelve months of membership, at 195 pounds, 220 euros or 260 US dollars, and the course counts for 20 hours of continuing professional development.
Individual membership starts at 195 pounds a year and includes the ICA Learning Hub with more than 300 hours of content, weekly webinars, a CPD tracking tool, regulatory alerts and the inCOMPLIANCE magazine. Members can earn the status of ICA Certified Practitioner, and firms can buy group membership for 5 to 500 people or a corporate hub with its own branded learning platform for larger teams.
ICA Compliance Awards and events
The ICA Compliance Awards Europe are cross-sector awards for compliance, financial crime prevention, governance and risk management, now in their sixth year. They have 24 categories and more than 70 judges, and more than 650 guests attend the ceremony in London. Entries come from people, teams and organizations in Europe, and separate award programs cover the APAC and MENA regions.
The flagship event of ICA is Future of FinCrime and Compliance in London, two days with summits on financial crime, compliance and leadership. ICA also runs the virtual ICA AI Week, a FinCrime and Banking Forum for more than 150 senior practitioners from UK and EU banks and a forum on financial crime in insurance with Axco, within a program of more than 50 events and webinars.
Upcoming compliance and finance events in Europe
President, tutors and advisory board
Pekka Dare is president of ICA, and Tim Tyler is vice president. The tutors of ICA are practitioners such as David Povey, course director for AML and sanctions, and Rosalind Dixon-Burnett, global lead for governance, risk and compliance. External speakers from compliance practice teach on the postgraduate diplomas, and ICA also has a Global Practitioner Advisory Board.
Partners in Europe and training for banks
Outside the United Kingdom, partner organizations teach ICA qualifications in Africa, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. Partners in Europe include the Cyprus Compliance Association, the Baltic Compliance Association, the Institute of Financial Services Malta and the Association of Serbian Banks.
Firms also book ICA for in-house training of whole compliance teams. For Deutsche Bank, ICA delivered localized AML training on client onboarding to 1,052 employees in 34 countries.
Address and parent company
The registered office of the International Compliance Association is at Fort Dunlop, Fort Parkway, Birmingham B24 9FD, the address of its parent group Wilmington plc. Most in-person events of ICA take place in London, and learners in the United Arab Emirates have their own local contact line.
International Compliance Association and Finance Loop
Compliance officers and money laundering reporting officers in banks meet the same questions as Finance Loop members who build new products, such as KYC for crypto custody clients or the travel rule for stablecoin transfers. Finance Loop discusses these questions at its events, where Risk & Compliance is one of the four content tracks.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.