The International Compliance Association is expanding its global reach with its first U.S.-based office in New York City.

ICA, which serves compliance professionals and their financial institutions, made the venture at the request of its worldwide members and the idea that a global financial group should have a foothold in the U.S. Previously, ICA had a large presence in the United Kingdom, with offices in the UAE and Singapore, and courses offered in various other countries.

“The International Compliance Association wants to help make the world more stable and successful by inspiring, educating, and enabling our global community of compliance specialists to perform to the highest standards of professional practice and conduct,” Steve Stromp, ICA’s U.S. representative and director of ICA training partner International Compliance Training (ICT), said in a press release. “With our training and certifications now available for the U.S. compliance community, we are excited that U.S. compliance and financial crime prevention professionals can benefit from our international insights and uniquely practical training methods to further their career, develop their teams, and help lead their businesses into the future.”

Currently, ICA is working to build up its U.S. membership through referrals from current ICA members, a media campaign, and an open house in New York City. The marketing push is focused on raising awareness around member benefits such as certifications, training programs, think tank outputs, and networking opportunities.

“Between the ICA, which is our nonprofit arm, and the ICT, which is the training solutions arm, we feel that this is something that we can help serve a need in the U.S. financial system,” Stromp told Associations Now.

Four levels of education, with differing workloads, are available to members: certificate, advanced certificate, diploma, and a postgraduate program in governance risk and compliance. Programs offered in the New York office will include Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Bribery and Corruption, Know Your Customer, Sanctions, and Managing Fraud.

While the topics covered are fairly standard across different countries, the New York courses will be targeted to a U.S. market. All countries’ programs cover local and foreign compliance rules. They have also been updated to reflect American legislation, best practices, and practitioners’ perspectives—ensuring compliance professionals understand how foreign policies may affect their own work.

“We would make sure that anybody who works—and since most firms do work—cross-border that other countries’ major legislation … is also included in those [programs] so they are able to learn not only what the U.S. rules and regulations are, but other countries’, other jurisdictions’ impact on different practices,” Stromp said.

Finally, Stromp explained that ICA’s U.S. presence will allow the group to further engage in the international discussion around compliance and strengthen its global approach to fighting financial crime.

“The bad guys are ahead of us when it comes to being able to launder money around the world and cross-border transactions, and you need a global organization like the ICA to understand all these jurisdictions and what goes on,” he said. “We feel the ICA is very well-positioned to serve in thought leadership on how we can best protect society, how we can best stop tax evaders, money launderers, and terrorist financers, because of the experience the ICA has and the research that we do.”

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