ACAMS Reviews 39

I am writing to document my extreme dissatisfaction with both the billing process and the overall value of CAMS membership.

First, I have been provided with incorrect pricing information on four separate occasions, resulting in significant confusion and inconvenience.

Here is the chronological breakdown of the erroneous information:

Initial Price: I was first incorrectly quoted only $200 USD.

First Correction: I was then told the total was $200 plus an additional $525 USD for membership.

Third Price: I was subsequently informed the correct membership fee is $750 USD (pre-tax).

Fourth Price: While I was still trying to resolve the $750 demand, I have just received another separate email demanding $825.

This situation is particularly frustrating because had I simply paid the initial $825 total that was showing on my ACAMS portal before proactively reaching out, this entire series of errors would have been avoided. Given the $200 I have already paid, I am now being asked for $750 (totaling $950), while simultaneously being billed for $825.

Second, this administrative chaos only reinforces my concern that the value of CAMS has dropped tremendously. The membership benefits have been diluted, while prices for services like webinars have become exorbitant—charging hundreds for live access, and hundreds more to view the recording.

When credible alternative providers like the International Compliance Association (ICA) exist, why would anyone want to be associated with an organization that demonstrates this level of incompetence and disregard for its members?

Supposed to be a professional licensing organization. More likely to find professionals at a lemonade stand run by toddlers. Organization is willing to lie to you, mislead you and outright never get their information correct...but still somehow expects full payment. Customer support is sort of helpful, but also the ones that lied. I love the feeling of being defrauded by the organization that certifies I can work in anti-fraud.

For me ACAMS turned out to be a waste of money unfortunately. Material provided doesn't worth the price they charge for the course plus a very high cost of yearly membership that gives you nothing apart from useless webinars. I don't recommend it at all. Save your money and do a course that actually will make a difference.

Customer support was terrible.
I started reading reviews and I am so happy I did not pay money to ACAMS.

Following to see if the reviews change.

I'm sorry but this entire thing is a scam. From the huge upfront cost to the annual membership, I'm not really sure how this was even allowed to happen or become the industry standard. Look at FINRA and how their licensing is done. Relatively speaking, cheaper, more in depth and easier to maintain. This isn't even a government entity, just some third party company. I can't fathom how the AML industry was hijacked by these money hungry frauds, but I for one will never willingly participate or pay for this. There's no value here and this company shouldn't exist.

I found ACAMS to be a great organization for their local chapter meetings and networking, and that of all the courses offered, the CAMS exam is likely the primary purpose of membership.
The reality is that selling and proctoring exams and certifications is their business model -- and an impressive global undertaking that no other AML training vendor can match.
The customer service staff communications are somewhat aggressive in their focus on selling those products, but I did receive timely and helpful responses to verify my eligibility and then pay the exam invoice when I was pressed to meet deadlines (kudos to Ellen V. in customer service!)
In their defense on costs, I found no-cost and low-cost online training and webinars that are excellent and earned enough credits for CAMS exam eligibility quickly.
Note that online research of CAMS exam study materials indicates those provided by ACAMS could be better —-and there are many other vendors who offer CAMS exam study products but are not related to ACAMS. Tread carefully.

I will give ACMAS 0 star if I can.

Half of the time, I can login successfully. The other half, with the same username and password, it led me to reset my password.

It also took them a long time for them to confirm the payment as if they do not like money.

Be aware that even after paying for the membership, you still need to pay extra money to attend their courses and get credits in order to maintain the membership. Companies do not care if you can maintain the membership or not that much, as long as you have passed the exam once, you are good to go. That is also the reason why you can see people just put ACAMS certificate issue date on Linkedln.

Here is ACAMS's "competitors":
Simply go to the government AML/ATF related website. To get an overview of AML/ATF, search "international anti money laundering organizations" in your browser. To get specific jurisdiction updates and instructions on how to do your job, search local financial intelligence unit. They are completely free and get updated based on criminal trends. You can also just search up news related to these trends. When I get my job interviews, they will usually ask you if you are familiar with the compliance policy of the jurisdiction the company operates in. Take a good look at that, you do not need ACAMS.

If you need proof that ACAMS is a for-profit enterprise that is only interested in taking your money, please read this review.

I've been an ACAMS member for over 15 years, and was invited to speak at their conferences in Las Vegas and Hollywood for almost 10 consecutive years. My presentations always received excellent feedback from the audiences and I generally spoke to packed rooms.

I'm a law enforcement professional who retired in 2023 to enter the private sector as a financial crime consultant. I noticed that I was not invited to speak at any of this year's conferences, so I reached out to my contact at ACAMS. I was told they would love to have me speak again, but my company would have to sponsor the event (known in the conference industry as "pay to play".)

The message here is that ACAMS is simply not interested in having seasoned professionals share their experiences with the AML community. They want money, period.

Also of note, ACAMS has changed ownership twice in the last few years and I began to notice a significant decline in the quality of their offerings.

I will not be renewing my membership when it expires this year. There are a lot of other financial crime organizations out there that are worth exploring.

After being unable to do the exam, Vueperson "escalates" the issue to ACAMS, which then sends back to Vueperson. A complete joke. I wish I had seen these reviews first. What a shame.
The profit-making enterprise won't last long this way. Who cares right ?!

Taking the ACAMS Money Laundering Specialist course/exam was the best thing I ever did. The reading material is very informative and the support from Tom Frenzel and Praj was second to none. Any concerns or information I needed was always answered and resolved swiftly. Highly recommend taking the course with ACAMS if that's the career path you choose.

As has happened with many professional associations, ACAMS was sold to a for-profit enterprise (regardless of their tax-status) and revenue and profit are the key focal points of the organization.

Besides their accreditation programs being excessively priced, their customer service is abysmal and the instructors they hire to conduct classes are just trying to get through the curriculum rather than trying to ensure anyone learns something.

They're performing an upgrade to their LMS which takes it offline for those trying to complete their coursework and the downtime is 3 entire days. This illustrates clearly that they haven't got the necessary IT skills to manage what should be a much simpler (and faster task).

This experience is similar to other "professional organizations" (e.g. ATD) where they get the tax benefit of being "not for profit", but trust me... it's a very profitable business for the owners.

ACAMS is a scam. Despite lacking concrete evidence, they threatened to revoke my certification, which I earned legitimately on December 11th. Now, they're demanding an additional $100 for an alternate exam, unjustly placing the burden on me. This experience feels like unwarranted mental harassment. After so much time and effort I passed the exam and now to make more money they have started this business. This is the most awful experience.

I am deeply sad to dont see my name on graduate list and got a answer from ACAMS ( never see when you are graduate you have to pays always to have your name on list). I faced so many struggle while preparing, despite health issues i payed for renew twice my membership, work in many difficuties du to my health, i want to cry for disappointment. Every thing is money with ACAMS only money!

Is it a scam to loot candidates?
I passed my exam on 1st December 2023 , I received a mail from acams on 14march 2024 that my certificate has been suspended siting below resons:

"Specifically, your CAMS exam on
12/1/2023
surpassed our threshold for Extreme Similarity, which typically indicates the use of shared exam content, often from an exam dumps site, the use of which are prohibited for reasons
explained below.

ACAMS certification questions are the copyrighted intellectual property of ACAMS, and copying, reproducing, distributing, or sharing is strictly prohibited, as stated in the Test Taker Agreement you signed prior to taking the exam (See highlighted sections of the Test Taker Agreement, attached).



Furthermore, by signing the Test Taker Agreement, you represented that you had not received exam questions from others.

Lastly, the Test Taker Agreement informs you of potential penalties for failing to abide by the requirements including, but not limited to revocation of your certification
and ACAMS membership. "

I was in shock reading after reading the mail. All my a year of hardwork and huge exam fee is on stake because of their algorithm which states that I might have got all the acams questions from some source. I was amazed by this reason so I went online searching is it even possible to get real exam questions of Acams so easily? Prestigious exams like acams is giving reasons that I might have used real exam questions available somewhere ,God knows where, if it was this easy to get exam questions every body would have passed and would have saved their retake money. Acams has all the things designed in such a way where they can charge you for every thing be it rescheduling,retaking whatever.

Anyways ,they gave me two options, either to appeal or to retake with their minimum fee.
I formally appealed giving all the evidences of my preparation from last one year ,my notes, my short notes everything but I received a mail today that it has been denied and I need to retake the exam because their algorithm states of using outside exam materials to pass the exam.

I mean ,are they even for real? Can they give me proofs of having used other study materials? How can they dupe me of my hard earned money and what about my time invested and the trauma they are causing ? They need to understand that it's a lot of money and several months of time which has been invested despite being a full time professional. I want to challenge this, can someone guide me how to take it legally which doesn't involve cost.

I won't pay a single penny and any more time of mine on this useless certification which has no ethics.

This is my continuation of the story for the people who still consider whether it is worth applying for the membership and courses at this institution.

As soon as I submitted negative review on TrustPilot the representative contacted me via email through which initial discussion regarding the issue started.
The answer has been general (i.e., forwarded my issue) and after couple of days, on 13/02/2024, i receive, first, confirmation that i have been registered for re-take exam, then i receive second email with info that my case has been closed and only after that i receive again general message from representative (Paola S.) stating that:

- They assure me that their study materials cover and prepare for the Exam;
- They conduct regular quality checks of exams;
- Training materials provide the knowledge needed to prepare for the examination;
- In order to maintain the integrity of their exams and exam security, they cannot share copies of the exam.

And e-mail also stated that they also registered me for a re-take exam.

So my concerns haven't been taken into the account properly.

As a result i asked additional questions, such as:

- Why my case was closed without confirmation with me?

- I provided some evidence (screenshots from materials) confirming my statement that Study Guide has mistakes and misleading information; Also mentioned, as evidence, some examples from the provided Handbook (which states that Study Guide is main reference material and content source for preparing for the rigors of the examination) where there are examination themes/questions not covered in study guides and asking to specify pages to that questions if they assure that their study materials cover and prepare for the exam.

- Also asked whether they have some certification accreditation by third party or authority that would prove compliance with best practices and standards (at least ISO standards).

- And also again asked to get detailed information on the exam because every person willing to start the course agreed on Non-Disclosure obligation, so there should not be the problem.

- And also asked where are the guarantees that after accepting the re-take there will not be such issues again?

I am still waiting for the answer since 13/02/2024 and have been sending kind reminders several times, still no answer.
I also tried to call today on 21/02/2024 to their branch in Paris during their working time and i received answer from answerphone that the "The offices are closed and please try to call normal working time from Monday to Friday from 9 AM till 5 PM.".

All facts (ignoring the claims, closed offices, no-refund policy, non-compliance between their statements and study materials, possible absence of any kind of accreditation (like CPD or ISO) of their courses by third parties or respective authorities) indicates, from my point of view, unfair, deceptive, fraudulent and unethical business practice.

I also wrote about that kind of negative business practice to one of the COO, hope that this will help.

Considering to write report/claim to respective Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Will be updating on the results.

Their Support ignored 5 of my consecutive support requests.

I paid over 3500 USD in fees for a conference, membership, recertification, and a live workshop after the conference.

Having paid so much money, I am still not able to watch Recorded Webinars from their library - it keeps asking me to pay 345 USD for a 1-year membership, which I paid 2 months ago.

Make no mistake - they are deliberetly ignoring my support tickets and close them immediately after opening without providing ANY reply.

Today I will send the 6th support request in a row hoping for them to respond and solve the issue, so I can study.

Hi There , I took up ACAMS exams after getting training from an institute instructor and he said he prepares questions his input is taken into consideration when preparing exams questions.. Just to be clear I appeared for exams with the material provided by institutions and also studied from ACAMS online registration portal after submitting fees unfortunately the questionnaire that appeared in exams was so u relevant to what I studied from the materials and ACAMS online platform .. they were all advanced level questions when I was appearing for initial basic start of ACAMS .. if they make it this difficult then no one will have the courage to retake the ACAMS exams ever .. we know and have understood how ACAMS works by studying materials and nothing comes in your exams what you actually prepared for .. very sad but true .. and I can't afford to pay again Somuch to re apply same fees for retaking the exams .. please advise if there has been a change in anything .. I request ACAMS to please advise and consider my requests and recheck the questions that was provided to me on my exam day

The clue is in the name, just get the S to the start. You need to pay hundreds of £s to keep your certification "valid" - imagine losing your degree if you didn't pay a few hundred every year. The training materials are nice, mostly your basic stuff that would be covered by any bank, but the exam is awful. Poorly worded questions designed to trip you up and bad grammar. The questions are also not those covered in any practice simulations. Also had one about red flags where all the answers were red flags and I had to choose two (7+ years experience). Its a joke but nobody will say it, I passed it, not paying for renewal though. Just a tick box on the CV.

To start with:
I had a difficult and very stress full experience with Acams website and the test entity.
I recommend you to do read the policy and term and condition fully, so you know where you stand with exams, and all terms.
Initially I have ask for time to study, and the Acams only give me few extra month, turned out not sufficient time.
I did also have a bad experience during the Exam take, I got interrupted twice. I did FAILED the first attempt, the exam conditions were stress full not friendly.

However, Acams did call me and now they give me an extenuation for me to retake the exam. Thanks

Now I will study and maybe pass the exam, I least I get more time.
Anyway I am with studying with IAPP for Data Protection and they give you unlimited time study, 0 stress.

I took the entry level course from ACAMS and attempted to take the exam a few months ago. I was surprised that most of the questions covered were not on any of the study materials provided. When I contacted customer service they insisted that everything was provided and to try again. Second attempt had the same issue. Not only did they have material not covered, but they worded questions to trick/decieve the test taker instead of testing them on the knoweldge of the material. I ended up wasting over six months of my life on this but don't worry, ACAMS got their $2000 plus in fees, courses, exams retakes and will continue to hustle money out of people in the industry. Heed others warnings about this company and stay far away.