Klara Barnes, Consultant

Meet Klara

Klara is a Financial Crime Consultant at Avyse Partners and has over seven years' experience in financial services, supporting clients across banking, asset management and digital finance, including payments, e-money and cryptoassets. Having worked in both large financial institutions and start-ups, she brings a well-rounded view of financial crime risks and regulatory expectations. Klara also completed a secondment at the UK regulator as a Crypto AML Specialist.

Illustrative experience:

Klara has worked on multiple Section 166 Skilled Person reviews of payment service providers and Electronic Money Institutions, assessing their financial crime frameworks.
Klara specialises in financial crime compliance for cryptoasset firms, drawing on her secondment at the UK regulator as a Crypto AML Specialist and her independent reviews of crypto firms' financial crime frameworks. She enjoys helping crypto firms meet their regulatory obligations as the UK regime continues to evolve.
Klara has delivered financial crime remediation and transformation work for global investment banks, UK high street banks and global asset managers.
Klara is a certified Fraud Examiner and holds the ICA Diploma in Anti-Money Laundering. She is passionate about tackling economic crime, promoting financial inclusion and mentoring others in the industry.

In Klara's spare time, she can usually be found with her dog Spartacus, who, when he's not at doggy day-care, takes his role as her work-from-home supervisor very seriously.

She and her partner Alex are regulars on the tennis court and out running together, though who sets the pace is still very much up for debate! Weekends are for slow coffees in one of Clapham's many coffee shops, ideally with a good Substack article to hand. Klara loves travelling far and wide, but her favourite trip is always home to South Africa to visit her family, top up on sunshine and dust off her Afrikaans.