Most companies treat the onboarding process as an HR exercise: a laptop, a login, a folder of policies to sign, and a buddy for the first week. For an entity regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), this framing represents a liability. The moment a new employee touches a customer’s account, fulfills an order, or reviews a transaction, the company has expanded its organizational scope to include someone who may not yet be qualified to stand within it. The setting in this sector is not administrative. It is the point where efficiency risks enter the business. This is exactly the pain point that Finance Magnates Academy is at Designed to process Through compliance education and continuing professional development learning.
More than just having credentials
For individuals, these rules are specific about who can do what. Anyone offering to receive and transmit orders or execute orders at a Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) must hold a CySEC Basic certificate. Anyone working in a broader investment services function, including directors and executives, needs the advanced level. Compliance officers, internal auditors, risk managers and a mandatory anti-money laundering compliance officer stand behind their own accreditation requirements.
These are not nice credentials. It is the legal prerequisite for this role, and each accredited person must be entered into the public register with CySEC, with registration valid for one year and only renewable for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours completed.
This structure creates a gap that most setups ignore. Certification is not a prerequisite for taking the exam, which means a company can hire a capable person who is not yet certified and put them to work while they complete the paperwork. The temptation is clear, especially in a tight labor market, where an empty desk costs revenue.
But passing scores on the exam present real hurdles: 70 percent for Advanced, 60 percent for Basic, and 40 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes for the AML, where more than one answer can be correct. People fail this. An employee who does not succeed, or who drifts for months in a non-certified state doing work that requires certification, is a supervisory finding waiting to happen.
Anti-money laundering in focus
The anti-money laundering dimension makes this even clearer. Every CIF, CASP, payment institution, electronic money institution and bank regulated by CySEC or the Central Bank of Cyprus must appoint a dedicated AML compliance officer, and the front-line staff feeding this function need to understand what they are looking for. Customer due diligence, knowledge of the customer’s checks, building the customer’s economic profile, constant monitoring: these are not abstract ideas that the new employee absorbs by osmosis.
It’s the everyday mechanics of not laundering money on behalf of a stranger. A new employee who processes onboarding documents without understanding the AML logic behind them is not a novice making rookie mistakes. They are failures of unsupervised control.
Setup has also become more technically demanding because the process itself has changed. Since CySEC’s remote onboarding policy went into effect, businesses can use biometric verification, dynamic selfies, electronic signatures, and eIDAS-compliant tools instead of relying solely on video calls.
This flexibility is useful, but it shifts the burden of risk assessment to the company, which must evaluate the money laundering and terrorist financing threats of any solution it adopts and notify CySEC before using it. Circular C721, issued in July 2025, confirmed that the timing of identity verification is not optional and that company qualification controls and the AML Manual must be able to demonstrate compliance on a case-by-case basis. A new employee who doesn’t understand when verification should occur, and how the company proves it’s happening, is triggering a control he doesn’t understand.
So, what does a defensible setup look like? It assigns the role to its certification requirements before a person starts, not after. It builds a realistic runway for relevant testing, supporting preparation rather than association and ignore. It treats AML training as a basic induction for anyone close to client onboarding, rather than a dedicated module for the compliance team.
It documents all of this, because the question the regulator is asking is whether the company’s intentions are good or not. It comes down to whether the company can show that the person was qualified to do the job on the day they did it.
The companies that obtain this right are not being careful themselves. They realize that a new hire is the easiest point of non-compliance to enter a business, and the cheapest point to prevent it from happening. Onboarding is where efficiency is quietly integrated into or excluded from the company.
Find out what Finance Magnates Academy can do for you Compliance needs today.
Most companies treat the onboarding process as an HR exercise: a laptop, a login, a folder of policies to sign, and a buddy for the first week. For an entity regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), this framing represents a liability. The moment a new employee touches a customer’s account, fulfills an order, or reviews a transaction, the company has expanded its organizational scope to include someone who may not yet be qualified to stand within it. The setting in this sector is not administrative. It is the point where efficiency risks enter the business. This is exactly the pain point that Finance Magnates Academy is at Designed to process Through compliance education and continuing professional development learning.
More than just having credentials
For individuals, these rules are specific about who can do what. Anyone offering to receive and transmit orders or execute orders at a Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) must hold a CySEC Basic certificate. Anyone working in a broader investment services function, including directors and executives, needs the advanced level. Compliance officers, internal auditors, risk managers and a mandatory anti-money laundering compliance officer stand behind their own accreditation requirements.
These are not nice credentials. It is the legal prerequisite for this role, and each accredited person must be entered into the public register with CySEC, with registration valid for one year and only renewable for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours completed.
This structure creates a gap that most setups ignore. Certification is not a prerequisite for taking the exam, which means a company can hire a capable person who is not yet certified and put them to work while they complete the paperwork. The temptation is clear, especially in a tight labor market, where an empty desk costs revenue.
But passing scores on the exam present real hurdles: 70 percent for Advanced, 60 percent for Basic, and 40 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes for the AML, where more than one answer can be correct. People fail this. An employee who does not succeed, or who drifts for months in a non-certified state doing work that requires certification, is a supervisory finding waiting to happen.
Anti-money laundering in focus
The anti-money laundering dimension makes this even clearer. Every CIF, CASP, payment institution, electronic money institution and bank regulated by CySEC or the Central Bank of Cyprus must appoint a dedicated AML compliance officer, and the front-line staff feeding this function need to understand what they are looking for. Customer due diligence, knowledge of the customer’s checks, building the customer’s economic profile, constant monitoring: these are not abstract ideas that the new employee absorbs by osmosis.
It’s the everyday mechanics of not laundering money on behalf of a stranger. A new employee who processes onboarding documents without understanding the AML logic behind them is not a novice making rookie mistakes. They are failures of unsupervised control.
Setup has also become more technically demanding because the process itself has changed. Since CySEC’s remote onboarding policy went into effect, businesses can use biometric verification, dynamic selfies, electronic signatures, and eIDAS-compliant tools instead of relying solely on video calls.
This flexibility is useful, but it shifts the burden of risk assessment to the company, which must evaluate the money laundering and terrorist financing threats of any solution it adopts and notify CySEC before using it. Circular C721, issued in July 2025, confirmed that the timing of identity verification is not optional and that company qualification controls and the AML Manual must be able to demonstrate compliance on a case-by-case basis. A new employee who doesn’t understand when verification should occur, and how the company proves it’s happening, is triggering a control he doesn’t understand.
So, what does a defensible setup look like? It assigns the role to its certification requirements before a person starts, not after. It builds a realistic runway for relevant testing, supporting preparation rather than association and ignore. It treats AML training as a basic induction for anyone close to client onboarding, rather than a dedicated module for the compliance team.
It documents all of this, because the question the regulator is asking is whether the company’s intentions are good or not. It comes down to whether the company can show that the person was qualified to do the job on the day they did it.
The companies that obtain this right are not being careful themselves. They realize that a new hire is the easiest point of non-compliance to enter a business, and the cheapest point to prevent it from happening. Onboarding is where efficiency is quietly integrated into or excluded from the company.
Find out what Finance Magnates Academy can do for you Compliance needs today.
