A company dedicated to detecting and preventing terrorist financing and money laundering has relocated from New Jersey to New Hampshire, creating more than a dozen jobs that have been filled by graduates and students of a local community college.
AML Partners LLC, a software development center now in Franklin, was founded by Frank Cummings and Jonathan Almeida following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Experts in international banking compliance, the two created the company to provide detection technology to prevent global financial crimes.
High-tech tools are critical to the success of counter-terrorist financing and anti-money-laundering efforts and we're at the forefront of developing the best tools, said Cummings, who is CEO of AML Partners. This enables us to look for indicators or behaviors of possible crimes, be it money laundering, terrorism or fraud.
The company's flagship product, SURETY, provides financial institutions with software to evaluate the risk for financial crime for all new customers, and it provides data storage and analytical environment that enables institutions to comply with the myriad regulations found in the Bank Secrecy Act, the PATRIOT Act, and other U.S. laws.
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing efforts are critical at this point in history and the challenge is made exponentially more difficult by the use of technology to commit financial crimes, he said.
AML Partners opened in May at the Franklin Business Center in Franklin. Cummings said having access to a high-tech work force was critical in the decision to relocate. Three months after opening, AML Partners announced it had 11 and the average age of the workers is 24.
We found them in the community colleges: we raided New Hampshire Technical Institute, Cummings said. I don't have any job openings because as soon as one becomes available, one of my people recommends a classmate, or an instructor recommends a student and the position is filled almost immediately.
AML Partners, which has 32 international banking customers in the U.S. and four other countries, expects to employ 20 people by the end of the year. Cummings said he decided in 2008 that he'd like to move the company out of New Jersey, but we know what happened with the economy that year, he said, referring to the recession.
Cynthia Harrington, business recruiter with the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development, worked with him for more than years before the business was relocated. "Often times, it takes years for a relocation or expansion to happen, Harrington said. It takes patience and ongoing communication, but it is always worth the wait. In this case, AML Partners is a 21st century company tackling a 21st century global threat from Franklin and hiring a workforce that is helping to keep our young people close to home.
Cummings, an avid outdoorsman who moved to New Hampshire a couple of years before relocating his business, said the Granite State was his first choice when the business was ready to expand.
Our day-to-day work with financial institutions occurs primarily in New York and at other financial centers worldwide, but New Hampshire is a terrific place to work on software development, he said. As a business relocating from New Jersey, we have benefitted from the work ethic and the New Hampshire Advantage and we have found many highly skilled programmers from the state's community colleges. The availability of a high-tech workforce in New Hampshire is critical for us.
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