CFW Fin Crime Consulting and our Founder & Managing Director, Clarinda Woodford

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Clarinda's story

Big-4 training

Clarinda began her career journey at Big4 accountancy firm, EY. During her time at EY Clarinda led multiple teams to deliver financial crime projects, predominantly within the banking sector. She supported clients with both proactive and reactive financial crime framework enhancements, such as control framework reviews (e.g. Lot E s166 Skilled Person Reviews) and risk assessments. 

She also led her  team’s ‘Market Insights’ initiative which involved proposals/pitch development, industry roundtable events, publishing thought leadership and deploying internal team technical training. 

Clarinda was identified as a future leader and invited to participate in EY’s “Aspire” Leadership development programme. Following this, she achieved promotion to Manger grade a year ahead of the standard EY career pathway. 

Broadening into the legal sector

After her circa 6 year tenure at EY, Clarinda took an opportunity to grow the Risk Advisory practice at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright. 

She supported clients on a variety of matters across both financial services and non-financial services disciplines, focusing on helping firms to adapt to changes in UK and EU anti-financial crime legislation. 

She also led business development initiatives through proposals/pitches and thought leadership for NRF’s “Regulation Tomorrow” platform.

Transition back to large, global consulting houses

Clarinda identified an opportunity to return to the pure consultancy arena and took a Senior Manager role at global accountancy giant BDO, where she enjoyed an almost 5 year tenure. She progressed rapidly, promoted to Associate Director and then Director over a 3 year period. 

Reporting directly to the Partner, she led engagements and business development initiatives across financial services and non-financial services sectors. She was primarily responsible for driving her division's revenue growth across FCA-supervised UK Payment Institutions/EMIs/FinTechs and Gambling Commission-supervised betting and gaming operators, alongside other sectors. 

Boutique financial crime consultancy

Capitalising on an opportunity to grow a division of a consulting practice from scratch, Clarinda made the move to a boutique, London-based financial crime consultancy (BeyondFS). 

She embraced the challenge of launching and building the Payments/eMoney financial crime advisory practice from the ground up, leveraging her skills, experience and network to develop the strategy. She proactively generated and pursued multiple qualified leads in a new sector with no existing pipeline to build from; created and maintained a scale-up PI and EMI community, delivering mutual benefit to member firms and the consulting practice alike; and established the practice's external profile through speaking engagements at numerous industry events.

The launch of CFW Fin Crime Consulting

After a highly successful career at various industry-leading consulting houses and law firms, Clarinda founded her own consulting brand to provide specialist and bespoke support to financial crime leaders who need hands-on and practical assistance grounded in extensive experience of working with financial services firms as well as regulators. 

CFW Fin Crime Consulting is a dedicated consultancy brand aiming to provide specialist and bespoke support to financial crime leaders who need hands-on and practical assistance. Clarinda brings her personal passion and experience of working with FCA-authorised Payment Institutions (PIs) and Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) to help financial crime leaders across 1LoD and 2LoD tackle the complex financial crime challenges associated with scaling up. However, she also enjoys working with wider financial services sector firms and beyond, including FinTech/neo banks, traditional retail and investment banking institutions and gaming and betting sector clients. 

Clarinda founded CFW to provide bespoke and tailored consultancy support and advice grounded in extensive, real-world experience of working with firms as well as regulators. Leaning into her extensive background in both Assurance as well as Advisory projects, she focuses on supporting her clients with initiatives and challenges such as Lot E s166 Skilled Person Review firm-side support, designing/uplifting financial crime policies and procedures and targeted assurance pieces (such as VREQ navigation).