ACAMS Bewertungen 

I booked the basic foundation course for my wife and money got deducted but where is the course and its past 10 days.. wherein the course has expiry date of 4 weeks from the payment date. No one replies over long waited queue over phone or cares to callback or reply back to emails and not even through their contact web form.

Sitting here on hold for over 30 minutes now as their customer service hours are about to come to an end without me getting any help. I’ve already sent two emails with no responses after spending $500 on a certification course. I received an email from them with “instructions to access the course” that contained nothing of the sort—just a link back to their homepage. If this is the typical experience, I will not be taking any additional course. As it is, I may have to request a chargeback through my bank.

I am a certified member of ACAMs. I do appreciate the importance of the certification and awareness on AML and CFT (Counter-terrorist Financing) but This organization needs a lot of work to do in terms of their Syllabus, Examination preparation and resources, training and most of all Customer services. For a new certification body i find them trying to get your money with minimal returns. They get your money but everything is quite substandard.

1) customer services - They are very slow in responding in all queries and troubleshooting. Particular experience I had was when my access to my profile and review materials were lost and I asked for help and trouble shooting. They replied after a month which did not resolve the problem and it took them another month for them to resolve. They have to move my start date as I lost some months till my eligibility. Another issue was when i had questions on the review materials, where I find quite inconsistent and practice questions that have questionable answers... they never come back to me after I followed up again after a month, then they told me "You have an outdated material, please access new one on your profile....Where is the notification??? Do i have to read the study guide again???"

2) training, syllabus and examination prep - Way to expensive with less information. The research and pulling materials outside is the candidate's work. No notification if there were updates (as mentioned above). The Study Guide only has 4 chapters and its just like story telling with some cases. They just drop names or people and organizations and typologies and literatures, Candidate has to pull the typologies and and literatures to numerous sites (even if they have an appendix with all the sites and links, most of them dont work... better google them... (risk is you may miss any updates or you may pull the outdated files). There are only 125 practice questions and the Organization does not even have test banks or maybe a committee that would help candidates to be prepared in terms of practice questions. (Tbh, AML Trainings in my company and questions are way better an challenging). For a very expensive training/certification course, they have to provide more materials than a set 300 page study guide, an audiobook (which cannot be downloaded and only encourages candidate to slack of from the reading) and a PDF version of a flashcard that i didnt even use. The video lectures are not packed with information so better read the study guide. Without practice tests its so hard to guage if you are ready or not. It burns out most candidates with the too much reading then when the exam comes, you laugh at the exams because others questions are common sense answers and others are not even in the scope of the study guide (per my opinion) , and you just have to make your an intelligent answer.

I joined some of the webex trainings and i find it most of them are courses through advertising the organization and its importance instead of technicalities. I gone tired and instead read textbooks and watch AML Documentaries lol

3) Membership, Examination fees and Rescheduling - Very Expensive. Membership is 295USD which i dont see much incentives like discounts to materials, trainings etc (unlike other professional association), Examination rescheduling fees is a whopping 100USD (consider your exchange rates). Clearly, ACAMS is really trying to get your money.

4) Value on your profession - Maybe it adds an additional letters under your name. Is it worth it? You be the judge. Will you be able to use this? Yes, but other certification bodies on compliance such as CIA, CRMA. CFSA would be a better cheaper choice to think AML is just a portion of their work. :)

One more thing I remember, they should have a code of professional ethics,, and include it as part of their curriculum.

I will have to see how the certification will affect me professionally and my bargaining power in getting a new job.