Alumna Matea Grbešić is working for
PWC's Financial Crime Unit in Poland
It
felt like yesterday when Matea Grbešić enrolled at RIT Croatia. Our ambitious
and engaged International Business student graduated in May 2017. Today, she is
in Gdansk, working for the big PWC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) as Junior Analyst
in Financial Crime Unit.
Matea and Ritchie, working on a TEDx
event in Zagreb in 2017
I wanted to get an international
working experience
„I
never knew I would end up here," says Matea: „I was thinking about getting some
international working experience. I applied for this job because I liked the job
description and decided to seize that opportunity. RIT Croatia prepared me very
well for this and thanks to RIT, I had the courage to apply for a job outside
Croatia. During my studies at RIT Croatia, we had a lot of projects, case
studies, team works and etc., and it helped me learn to think critically,
improved my problem solving skills, communication skills and analytical skills.
That approach also gave me strong working ethic which is all crucial in my
career development in this company."
Moving to Poland and experiencing the
coldest winter of my life!
„So,
on January 31st, 2018 I moved to the northern part of Poland in Gdansk and
experienced the coldest winter of my life. Gdansk is a beautiful city and it’s
connected with two other cities Sopot and Gdynia, and they are making one big
area called Tri-city. These 3 cities are connected with a 4, 5 km of sandy
beaches on the Baltic Sea" says Matea. She joined PWC with a 3 months’
probation period, and thought she would leave Poland afterwards. „My beginning
here was pretty tough, I was very homesick, and every day I was checking the
prices of the tickets to go home. Winter made everything even harder: it was
February, it was really cold, and outside was dark all the time. But as the
season changed, days became longer and everything was better." Not only with
the weather. Matea was offered a permanent contract. „My thinking changed and I
happily stayed here. I don’t have any plans right now for how long I will stay
in Poland, and I don’t want to plan anything anymore, because now I can see how
everything can be easily changed."
Matea at the Baltic sea in February
Working
in a Financial Crime Unit includes a lot of analytics
Pretty
much everything in this type of profession and department is super
confidential, so Matea could not share much about her work, but she told us how
her working day looks like: „Currently, I’m working as KYC analyst for one
international financial institution. My daily duties are to meet all KYC
requirements, including reviewing the globally available documents from
publicly approved sources and from internal sources. We also need to verify the
existence of our client's client through internal and external sources, like
registries, Bloomberg, Annual reports and etc. We need to investigate
what the client's client does, their nature of the business, the whole ownership
chart and etc. Once all required documents data are gathered (identified and
verified), we are performing screening, on all verified related parties of the
client (shareholders, legal representatives, owners, directors…). During the
screening process, if we identify any negative news relating to money
laundering or terrorist financing, we would analyze, investigate negative news,
prepare the summary on the investigation performed, and report to the
compliance manager. The clients are classified under risk categories, and they
are low medium and high. The risk is based on the factors like the county of
incorporation, politically exposed persons, exposures to sanctioned countries
and etc.". Sound interesting, to say the least!!
Thanks to PWC, I'm also learning
Polish!
The
days in Gdansk, says Matea, are passing by really quickly. She is satisfied
with the company, the work and the co-workers as well: „The PWC is offering to
their employees a lot of opportunities, like to enroll any language course we
would like, for free, so I enrolled Polish class to make my life easier here,
and to meet other foreign colleges from work. The great thing is that company
is very diverse; we have people from all over the world!"
Matea
said that being a foreigner here is challenging but people make up for it: „I
was prepared from the beginning that I’m moving from everything I know, all
people I know, my family, that I’m going out of my comfort zone. But I wasn’t
ready that it will be so challenging living as a foreigner in Poland. People
outside work don’t know English, and to a lot of people here I'm the first
Balkan person they met in Poland (Gdansk) ever. However, people here are very
nice and helpful. Especially my co-workers, from the first day they were here
for me and tried to make my life here easier."
You ask,
