Stephen Dennison manages the sanctions, geopolitics and trade portfolios on the U.S. Financial Crime Analysis team as part of HSBC’s compliance function. He is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and recently participated as a panelist at the ACAMS Sanctions Summit in February 2022, where he discussed the mapping of sanctions evasion networks.

Dennison joined HSBC in 2018 and conducts proactive intelligence analysis on emerging and evolving financial crime threats, fusing bank and commercially available data with open-source research. He has built expertise in the mitigation of geopolitical and maritime risk. Recently, his analytic work has centered on environmental crime—an area of increased attention across the public and private sectors.

Before joining HSBC, Dennison worked for 10 years in various intelligence roles at the U.K. Ministry of Defence. While there, he focused on counter-terrorism investigations and the disruption of terrorist networks. Dennison also worked on implementing innovative government intelligence information technology (IT) systems and the formulation of associated changes to working practices and policies.

Dennison earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University College London in 2004 and a master’s degree in international relations theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2012.