Matthew Fee

Program Leadership

• Direct a comprehensive compliance program encompassing BSA/AML, OFAC, fraud prevention, merchant underwriting, and processing guidelines, ensuring full regulatory adherence and strong internal controls.
• Successfully manage multiple concurrent compliance initiatives, balancing resources and priorities while maintaining accuracy, quality, and regulatory integrity.

Merchant Underwriting & Growth

• Strengthened the merchant underwriting program, enabling the approval of 100 underwriting packages per month—five times the industry average per salesperson—while maintaining rigorous risk standards.
• Partner with sales leadership to align risk tolerance with business growth, driving portfolio expansion without compromising compliance.

Monitoring & Investigations

• Perform advanced transactional analysis on large, complex data sets to detect anomalies, financial crime typologies, and suspicious activity patterns.
• Enhanced ongoing monitoring of merchant transactions and chargebacks, reducing the portfolio chargeback rate by 50% through proactive controls.
• Manage daily merchant alerts, ensuring rapid resolution of issues and conducting thorough investigations with appropriate escalation when warranted.
• Conduct monthly OFAC screenings, mitigating false positives and taking immediate action on confirmed matches to ensure compliance with U.S. Treasury regulations.

Risk & Audit Management

• Lead coordination of regulatory and third-party audits (BSA/AML, KYC, SOC 2 Type I & II), collaborating with executive management and outside agencies to achieve favorable audit outcomes.
• Established and maintained comprehensive risk matrices to evaluate and mitigate risks associated with international transactions, high-risk licensing, and chargeback exposure.

Policies, Procedures & Controls

• Designed and implemented BSA/AML, OFAC, anti-fraud, and underwriting policies and procedures, building scalable frameworks aligned with organizational growth.
• Developed enhanced due diligence (EDD) checklists and standard operating procedures to strengthen risk assessment and compliance oversight across high-risk portfolios.

Risk Reviews & Analysis

• Conducted comprehensive Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) reviews of high-risk customers, transactions, and activities, delivering accurate assessments to strengthen the bank’s risk posture.
• Performed in-depth transactional analysis on large merchant datasets to identify anomalies, financial crime typologies, and suspicious activity.
• Formulated risk recommendations based on EDD findings, providing actionable insights that guided decision-making on the bank’s high-risk customer base.
• Reviewed and assessed diverse high-risk customer types—including cryptocurrency and cannabis-related businesses (CRBs)—to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and mitigate financial crime risks.

Sanctions & Screening

• Conducted sanctions and adverse media screenings using advanced risk management tools, mitigating exposure to reputational, regulatory, and operational risk.

Regulation Expertise

• Applied working knowledge of compliance regulations and frameworks, including the U.S. Patriot Act, BSA/AML, OFAC, FCPA, Fraud, and KYC, to guide risk reviews and maintain adherence to legal requirements.

Branch & Project Support

• Orchestrated weekly Customer Due Diligence (CDD) outreach across 49 branches, supporting seamless onboarding of new clients while strengthening compliance oversight.

Tools & Process Improvements

• Successfully managed multiple concurrent projects, prioritizing tasks and resources to consistently meet deadlines while upholding quality and accuracy.
• Developed and implemented tailored EDD risk review templates, optimizing efficiency, accuracy, and consistency across high-risk client evaluations.
• Leveraged advanced Excel capabilities to track and analyze CDD progress, enabling enhanced visibility and reporting for internal stakeholders.

Risk Reviews & Investigations

• Conducted Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) reviews of high-risk customer profiles, transactions, and activities—including marijuana-related businesses—ensuring comprehensive risk assessments.
• Performed AML and fraud investigations, analyzing large datasets of complex financial transactions and filing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) when warranted.
• Identified and investigated red flags tied to money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, terrorist financing, human trafficking, sanctions violations, and other suspicious activity.

Sanctions & Screening

• Utilized advanced risk management tools (LexisNexis, CLEAR) to conduct sanctions screenings and adverse media searches, mitigating regulatory and reputational risk.

High-Risk Customer Expertise

• Demonstrated proficiency in monitoring and assessing high-risk customer segments, including casinos, weapons dealers, Money Service Businesses (MSBs), and Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRBs).

Risk Management & Recommendations

• Provided risk rating recommendations and executed customer risk tuning to optimize monitoring models and strengthen the bank’s risk management framework.

Tools & Compliance Knowledge

• Applied strong time management skills to balance multiple projects, consistently meeting deadlines and exceeding quality standards.
• Leveraged Microsoft Office, Verafin, and Fiserv to support compliance, investigations, and reporting functions.
• Applied deep knowledge of BSA/AML, OFAC, and KYC laws, regulations, and typologies to guide risk reviews and maintain regulatory compliance.