Vaibhav Dugar - Senior AML/CFT Regulator

Where are you originally from? 

I'm originally from India, where I trained and began my legal career before relocating to New Zealand.

What was your legal background and experience in your home country? 

I completed my Bachelor of Laws (BA LLB) at Amity University, graduating with an 8.4/9 CGPA and a full tuition fee waiver scholarship, and later added a Diploma in Alternative Dispute Resolution from the Indian Law Institute, where I received the "Best Negotiator" award. I'm a registered lawyer in India. My legal career there culminated in a role as Legal Compliance Officer at Barclays, where I managed client due diligence and account screening for high-net-worth individuals, handled FATCA and financial crime matters for entities registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and used tools like LexisNexis for AML screening.

What motivated you to move to New Zealand? 

It came down to New Zealand's natural beauty and the opportunity to bring my education and my love of nature into consonance with one another. New Zealand offered a rare combination, a first-rate legal education alongside a lifestyle built around the outdoors, and that balance genuinely appealed to me. The University of Auckland made the decision easier still by offering me an international student scholarship to pursue my LLM there.

What made you decide to continue your career in the New Zealand legal industry? 

Once I'd completed my LLM, I saw that New Zealand's financial crime and regulatory compliance sector was a natural home for my legal training, it let me keep applying legal reasoning and judgment, just channelled into governance, risk and AML/CFT work rather than traditional practice. It also meant I could build a career in a jurisdiction with a strong rule of law tradition and a regulatory environment I found genuinely interesting to work within.

Can you tell us a little about the journey from arriving in New Zealand to securing your current role? 

I arrived to complete my Master of Laws (LLM) at the University of Auckland (2019–2020), which I was awarded with merit. While establishing myself, I started at Xe (formerly HiFX) as a Compliance Operations Analyst, where I redesigned the identity document verification procedure and onboarded LexisNexis for adverse media screening. From there I moved to Rabobank as a First Line Monitoring and Assurance Analyst, working on sanctions policy implementation and Section 59 AML audits. I then joined Tiger Brokers as Senior Compliance Officer and Team Lead, directly managing a team of 3–5 AML analysts. After that I moved into Quality Assurance on the Financial Crime Team at ASB Bank, and in March 2026, I stepped into my current role as Senior AML/CFT Regulator at the Department of Internal Affairs.

What is your current role and what does your work involve? 

I'm a Senior AML/CFT Regulator with the Department of Internal Affairs, in the AML/CFT Group, Regulatory and Identity Services. I supervise and assess AML/CFT frameworks across a portfolio of reporting entities, planning and directing risk-based onsite and offsite inspections. That involves evaluating the technical compliance and operational effectiveness of customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reporting, and governance controls; authoring inspection reports and remediation recommendations; reviewing entities' risk assessments; and monitoring remediation programs. I also provide supervisory guidance and mentoring to junior regulators within inspection teams.

How does your current role and experience in New Zealand compare with your previous legal work in your home country? 

In India, my legal compliance work was largely institution-facing client due diligence, screening and FATCA matters within a single bank. In New Zealand, my role has evolved into system-wide regulatory oversight: rather than managing compliance within one organisation, I now supervise and hold multiple reporting entities to account against the AML/CFT Act 2009 and FATF standards. It's a shift from applying the rules to also interpreting, testing and enforcing them with a much stronger emphasis on governance judgment and accountability frameworks.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when transitioning into the New Zealand legal industry? 

The biggest challenge was translating a legal qualification and practice background from India into a completely different regulatory framework, New Zealand's AML/CFT regime, its institutions and its professional networks were all unfamiliar to me at first. I also wasn't (and am not yet) admitted to practice law in New Zealand, so I had to find a path that let me keep using my legal training meaningfully rather than starting from zero in an unrelated field.

How did you overcome those challenges? 

I invested early in credentials that were directly relevant and internationally recognised, the LLM, then the CAMS and CGSS certifications through ACAMS, which gave New Zealand employers confidence in my technical grounding. I also built experience deliberately across different types of institutions (a payments company, a European bank, a brokerage, a major retail bank, and now the regulator itself), which broadened my exposure quickly and let me build a professional network from the ground up. Joining the Institute of Directors New Zealand as a member also helped sharpen my governance perspective.

Is there a particular experience, achievement or moment in your New Zealand career that you are especially proud of? 

Leading the AML analyst team at Tiger Brokers stands out, being the sole CAMS-qualified staff member at the time, I designed and delivered interactive, gamified in-house AML/CFT training, and my team achieved a 20% increase in detection of potential money laundering cases under that coaching and casework model. Being recognised as a Member of the Institute of Directors New Zealand shortly after joining the Department of Internal Affairs was also a proud milestone, reflecting a commitment to governance and professional standards that I'd been building toward for years.

What advice would you give to other foreign lawyers who are considering moving to New Zealand or trying to build a career here? 

Don't assume your legal career here has to look identical to the one you had at home. New Zealand's financial crime, compliance and regulatory sectors deeply value legal training and reasoning, even outside a courtroom setting. Be open to building your career at that intersection, it can be just as intellectually engaging, and often opens doors faster than waiting to requalify for traditional practice.

Are there any particular skills, qualifications or experiences that you found especially valuable in establishing your career in New Zealand? 

My LLM from the University of Auckland gave me local academic credibility, while CAMS and CGSS certifications from ACAMS gave me internationally recognised technical authority in AML/CFT and sanctions. My grounding in customer due diligence, KYC and financial crime typologies from my time in India transferred directly. Membership of the Institute of Directors New Zealand also added weight to my governance credentials as I moved into more senior, supervisory work.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you first arrived in New Zealand? 

I wish I'd understood earlier just how broad "the legal industry" really is here, that compliance, regulatory supervision and financial crime roles are legitimate, valued extensions of a legal career, not a departure from it. I'd also have started building my professional network and pursuing industry certifications from day one, rather than treating them as things to get to later.

What do you enjoy most about living and working in New Zealand? 

The access to nature, without question. It's part of what drew me here in the first place, and it continues to shape how I live day to day. Outside of work, I box, practise hot yoga and go on brisk walks, all of which keep me focused and clear-headed, and New Zealand's environment makes that kind of lifestyle easy to sustain.

How would you describe the work-life balance in New Zealand compared with your home country? 

New Zealand offers a noticeably healthier balance. There's a cultural expectation here that work doesn't consume everything else, which has given me the space to keep up personal interests, from fitness to reading on geopolitics and financial crime trends, alongside a demanding regulatory career.

What are your professional goals for the future, and how do you see your career developing in New Zealand? 

I'm working towards establishing myself firmly in the financial crime space, with the goal of eventually leading an organisation in that field. I want to bring together my legal training, regulatory compliance experience, financial crime expertise and governance background into a role where I can set strategy and direction (not just execute against it) and help build institutions in New Zealand that are genuinely resilient against financial crime risk.