Team brings significant financial services expertise, including Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering, sanctions, fraud and anti-bribery and -corruption, along with deep experience working with Treasury Department, FinCEN and OFAC
Berkeley Research Group (BRG) announced that Dustin Palmer and Christopher Sidler have joined the firm as managing directors in its Financial Institutions Advisory practice. As part of BRG’s growing team, Palmer and Sidler will help financial institutions transform their regulatory compliance programs.
Palmer and Sidler are experts in regulatory compliance, with a focus on AML, know your customer (KYC), sanctions, fraud, anti-bribery and -corruption and related areas. They assist clients in regulatory and enforcement matters, with an emphasis on remediation, data science and machine learning, suspicious activity monitoring, risk assessment, and transaction monitoring and sanctions reviews and lookbacks. Their work will help transform compliance processes to drive efficiency and effectiveness.
Before joining BRG, Palmer and Sidler spent ten and thirteen years, respectively, at Promontory Financial Group, where they most recently led the financial crimes compliance practice. Palmer and Sidler have advised clients extensively throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Central and South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
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“BRG is a global leader focused on the issues facing financial services clients,” said BRG Principal Executive Officer and President Tri MacDonald. “With the addition of Dustin and Chris, we continue to deepen our bench with two of the most talented experts in the industry.”
Previously, Palmer was senior advisor to the general counsel and senior counsel for enforcement and intelligence at the US Department of the Treasury. He worked closely with FinCEN, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the departments of Commerce, State and Justice to implement policies and regulations to reduce organized crime and help secure the US financial system. He also was integrally involved in Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), along with interpreting and establishing data protection and privacy standards.
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“I’m excited to join a firm uniquely positioned to assist financial institutions in dealing with unprecedented disruption,” said Palmer. “With a global platform that leverages advanced data analytics with extensive sector experience, we’ll bring world-class resources to address our clients’ most complex problems.”
Sidler has overseen and executed large-scale KYC due diligence reviews and transaction lookbacks covering, among others, correspondent banking and trade finance. He has played a key role in applying regtech and suptech to strengthen financial institutions and the financial system against abuse. Earlier in his career, he worked with the United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office in Tanzania through the UN Association in Canada.
“BRG offers an opportunity to deliver leading-edge services to financial institutions and fintechs,” said Sidler. “Its regtech and investigations capabilities and expertise-led advisory philosophy give our clients access to cutting-edge and creative problem-solving in the financial crime space.”
