BSA/AML Compliance for Financial Institutions: Run the Program, Not Just the Checklist
Signature Course No. 419 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's BSA/AML Compliance for Financial Institutions: Run the Program, Not Just the Checklist course, in the Risk, Safety & Compliance category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
A checklist can be complete while a program is failing. Every box ticked, every filing made on time — and the risk assessment three years stale, the monitoring rules tuned to silence rather than to risk, the board reading counts instead of decisions. Examiners know this, and enforcement actions keep proving it. So this course never teaches the checklist as the goal. It teaches the checklist as the floor: the visible surface of a running system whose foundation document, design choices, and governance you will learn to build, test, and defend.
It starts with the program as a system. The Bank Secrecy Act is the statute; under it, FinCEN writes the rules, receives the filings, and can bring civil enforcement of its own, while the examining agencies supervise the program inside their institutions and test it in examinations. You answer to the rule writer for the filings, and to your examiner for the system that produced them — and you are judged on both. The pillars are not five tasks. They are one system with five load paths, and a failure in any one of them loads the other four.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Build the Foundation: Risk, Pillars, and Controls — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Foundation Blueprint; then, Module 2 — Run the System: Operations, Examinations, and Repair — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Remediation and Operating Plan.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a foundation blueprint for Osric National Bank: the rebuilt risk assessment of the institution as it now is, ratings that recompute from printed inputs, the design those ratings drive, the governance package, and the one-page defense; and a remediation and operating plan for a program under examination pressure: the honest register of findings, the rebuilt operating core, the lookback whose staffing arithmetic recomputes, the validation layer, and the board and examiner package.
The honesty standard is part of the course. Thresholds, deadlines, forms, guidance, and enforcement priorities are revised by rulemaking and by supervisory practice, so this course teaches the regime at structure level — the durable architecture: what the parts are, who issues them, what duty each part creates — and flags every point where you must verify the current position against the current source before you act. This course is information about a framework, not legal advice: it does not tell any institution what its legal obligations are in a specific case, and completing a capstone does not certify that any real institution complies with any law.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
BSA/AML Compliance for Financial Institutions: Run the Program, Not Just the Checklist is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
Already enrolled? Enter the course →
Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the program as a system. Pick any three program tasks — a filing, a review cycle, a screening process — and say, for each one, the assessed risk it answers, its owner, its evidence, and its independent check, without looking anything up; say when the program's parts last changed because another part produced new information; and list the program decisions currently being made by default — a vendor setting, an inherited threshold, an old procedure nobody has re-chosen. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Foundation Blueprint for Module 1 and The Remediation and Operating Plan for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Risk writes the program; the record is the proof. No control, threshold, review cycle, or report in this course is allowed to exist because a template said so: each one must trace to the risk assessment — this risk, rated this way, for these stated reasons, therefore this design. And a program exists, for an examiner, a board, or a court, only as far as its records show it existing: the assessment's reasoning, the tuning file's evidence, the case's chronology, the board's minutes, the tester's workpapers.
Module 1 builds the foundation. The Program as a System; The Enterprise Risk Assessment; Internal Controls by Design; The BSA Officer and Governance; Customer Due Diligence as Machinery; Beneficial Ownership Systems; The Education Pillar; Independent Testing; and Sanctions and Screening as a Program — the pillars assembled as one system, judged by the connections between its parts.
Module 2 runs the system. Transaction Monitoring Governance; Investigation Workflow and Case Management; SAR Operations; CTR, Exemptions, and Records Operations; Information Sharing and Confidentiality; Examiner Relations and Examination Management; Enforcement Lessons and Failure Patterns; Remediation That Proves Itself; and Metrics, Reporting, and Change Control — operations, examinations, and repair, run on honest clocks and proven with evidence.
And it holds its boundary throughout. The specialist's case craft — reading risk, recognizing methods, investigating cases, and writing filings from one seat inside a program — is taught in its own neighboring course, No. 407, CAMS Readiness, whose ground this course assumes; what every employee must do to spot something odd and escalate it is taught in No. 97. This course works the seat above and around the specialist's: the seat that designs the program whole, and owns what happens after the escalation arrives — and before it ever needs to.
What you will learn
- Read the BSA/AML regime as a system — the law, FinCEN, the examining agencies, and the program pillars — and state what each part requires of the institution, not just of a case
- Build and maintain an enterprise risk assessment that inventories customers, products, services, channels, and geographies, scores inherent risk honestly, and drives every later design choice
- Design internal controls around assessed risk, assign every control an owner and an evidence trail, and tell a designed control from an operating one
- Establish the BSA officer's mandate, authority, and board reporting so governance produces decisions, resources, and escalation — not minutes that merely record receipt
- Run customer due diligence and beneficial ownership as program machinery: risk rating models, expected-activity profiles, periodic review, and verification systems that hold at scale
- Build the education pillar by role, so each population learns the duties it actually carries, completion is real, and effectiveness is checked against error patterns
- Commission and use independent testing that is genuinely independent, risk-scoped, and followed to closure
- Run a sanctions and screening discipline — lists, interdiction, ownership rules, and match disposition — as a program, separate in logic from suspicious activity reporting
- Govern a transaction monitoring system: scenario design, threshold setting with evidence, tuning governance, alert workflow, case management, and quality control
- Run SAR, CTR, exemption, recordkeeping, and information-sharing operations as workflows with honest deadlines, confidentiality walls, and retention discipline
- Manage examinations professionally, read enforcement actions for their design lessons, and remediate findings to root cause with validation that proves the repair
- Measure program health without turning metrics into quotas, and control change — new products, channels, partners, and acquisitions — so the program is redesigned before the risk arrives, not after
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of BSA/AML Compliance for Financial Institutions: Run the Program, Not Just the Checklist, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Foundation Blueprint and The Remediation and Operating Plan
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people who own the program
BSA officers and their deputies — who own the program whole and need the design, governance, and repair judgment the seat actually demands, beyond the case judgment they already have; and compliance and risk leaders — chief compliance officers, chief risk officers, and operational risk managers who oversee the program, resource it, and answer for it beside the BSA officer.
Internal auditors and independent testers — who must judge whether a program works, not merely whether its paperwork exists; and operations and business-line leaders — deposit operations, payments, lending, digital channels, and product managers whose decisions create the program's risks and operate its first-line controls.
Directors and senior executives preparing for board duty on this subject — who must read a board report, ask the second question, and recognize a program that is performing compliance instead of achieving it; and consultants and advisors who build or remediate programs who need the institution-side view. This course assumes working familiarity with financial institution operations and with the specialist-level ground No. 407 teaches; it does not assume you have ever designed a program, led one through an examination, or rebuilt one under an enforcement order — that is what it is here to teach.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Program as a System
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
BSA/AML Compliance for Financial Institutions: Run the Program, Not Just the Checklist is Signature Course No. 419. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.