Plan on eight to ten weeks, longer than most roles. AML investigators need roughly 18 hours of structured learning, a few weeks shadowing the agent on live alerts, two weeks of assessed review decisions, and a final exam and sign-off. The extra time goes on judgement: an investigation turns on what the agent left out, not only what it wrote.
Why AML takes longer than other review roles
Most review work asks whether an agent's draft is right. AML review asks whether it is complete. An agent can assemble a tidy case narrative from transaction history, customer due diligence files and screening hits, and still miss the counterparty link that turns a routine alert into a report.
Investigators also handle fewer, longer cases than, say, a fraud queue. A fraud analyst may make dozens of review decisions a day; an investigator may close a handful. That means fewer chances for feedback in any given fortnight, so the shadow period before assessed review does real work. The comparison with faster-cycle roles is clear in how long it takes to train collections agents.
What the eight to ten weeks contain
- Weeks 1 to 2: foundations. About four hours on why agents are governed, depth, the decision chain and what the business is paying for. Investigators should finish able to explain why the agent cannot file a report on its own.
- Weeks 2 to 5: operator learning. About 14 hours on how a governed agent decides, human review, teaching the agent, reading the workspace and when something goes wrong, at four to five hours a week.
- Weeks 4 to 7: shadowing. The investigator reviews the agent's drafts alongside a senior colleague who makes the actual decisions. This overlaps with the later modules.
- Weeks 7 to 9: assessed review. Two weeks of the investigator's own decisions on the live alert queue, each checked.
- Week 9 or 10: exam and sign-off. A written exam, then sign-off on the review decisions.
What the agent does, and what stays with the investigator
| The agent may | Stays with the investigator |
|---|---|
| Gather transaction history, screening results and due diligence files (depth 1) | Deciding whether activity is suspicious |
| Draft the case narrative and a recommended disposition (depth 2) | Filing a suspicious transaction report |
| Close clear false positives on a narrow, certified pattern (depth 3, where earned) | Exiting a customer relationship |
| Hold any alert involving a politically exposed person or a new typology | Any contact with law enforcement |
The FATF Recommendations set the international expectation: a risk-based approach, customer due diligence, and suspicious transaction reporting. None of that moves to an agent. What investigators must learn is how to test a draft against it.
Provenance is the core skill. A customer's explanation for a large deposit is declared. A sale contract from a known solicitor is signed. The bank's own ledger is sealed. An investigator who cannot tell which kind of fact carries a narrative will approve weak cases that read well.
An illustrative timeline
Take a mid-sized bank's financial crime unit with six investigators. Weeks one to five run as above, with Thursday afternoons protected for study. From week four, each investigator shadows a senior colleague on the agent's drafts and writes their own disposition before seeing the senior's.
Calibration on the same set of alerts, run as described in calibration sessions for AML investigators, shows two investigators accepting the agent's summary of a customer's source of funds without opening the documents behind it. That is fixed before assessed review starts in week seven.
Investigators are also targets. A customer or relationship manager may lean on them to close an alert, or plant instructions in a document the agent reads. That is covered in training AML investigators to spot prompt injection and pressure.
What keeps the timeline honest
- Volume. If the queue is thin, extend shadowing rather than cutting it.
- Red lines. One missed red line in assessed review, such as approving the closure of an alert on a sanctioned counterparty, means no sign-off.
- Agent depth. If the agent never closes alerts at depth 3, investigators should still learn how to sample closed alerts, because it may.
A week-by-week version is in the training plan template for AML investigators. The wider sequence is in training teams for AI agents.
Where the Academy fits
The Operator track of Pryme Intelligence Academy covers the learning stages above in about 14 hours, after the four-hour Foundations track. Certification needs 32 of 40 questions on a 60-minute exam and a two-week practicum of real review decisions: at least 95 in every 100 correct, no missed red line, signed off by a Pryme assessor. The shadow period is the bank's own addition before that practicum.
Questions people ask
Can senior investigators go straight to assessed review?
They can skip some shadowing, not the assessed period. Seniority shows judgement about cases, not about how a particular agent builds them.
Should the MLRO take the same training?
The MLRO needs the foundations and a clear grasp of depth and the record, plus the governance view of who approves depth changes. They do not need to work the daily queue.
How often should investigators be retrained?
Brief them whenever the agent's depth, sources or typologies change, and renew any certificate before it lapses.