Salvatore LaScala
Guidehouse Consulting
Excellence in Innovation
An attorney, a former law enforcement officer, accountant, and certified fraud examiner, Salvatore applies a 360-degree perspective to solving client problems. As a partner and head of Guidehouse's Global Investigations and Compliance practice, he was instrumental in creating the firm's proprietary engagement technology, Suspicious Transaction Analysis and Reporting, or Star. Salvatore has played a role in implementing technology like machine learning and AI for some of the world's largest and most complex financial institutions.
LaScala is passionate about working with clients and helping them achieve success, he says he's grateful that Guidehouse Consulting's solutions have helped clients overcome regulatory and law enforcement challenges.
As for what being named a Global Leader in Consulting, he says the recognition "goes a long way towards validating the choices, sacrifices and personal cost in terms of travel and time away from home while mentoring great teams, serving great clients and forming invaluable personal and professional bonds based on jobs well done and mutual admiration."
As for what the award means for clients, LaScala offered "Our clients will benefit by relating to their stakeholders that they have retained a best-in-class service provider to manage risk, promptly detect and investigate compliance or regulatory issues and, when needed, provide fast and transparent remedies. Recognition of excellence benefits the financial services and compliance community by driving further innovation."
Ask LaScala what his greatest professional achievements have been in his career, he says it's been how his background and unique perspective on problem solving has streamlined processes for investigative efficiencies that help clients stay ahead of criminals.
"This experience enabled the creation of STAR™: Suspicious Transaction Analysis and Reporting, Guidehouse's proprietary engagement technology which consists of a rules engine, alert triage platform and feature-rich case management system. In one engagement for a global financial institution under a regulatory enforcement action, our team devised a transaction monitoring system that was utilized in a lookback, and later implemented for real-time monitoring to introduce segmentation and machine learning," he says.
"This new approach permitted the financial institution to better detect and prevent money laundering, and the technology and processes, though a novel approach, withstood the scrutiny of regulators. Specifically, the solutions help his clients reduce the "background noise" that can slow them down. Moreover, they are also more effective and identify fraud and AML typologies they might not have seen before."
Q&A: What has been the biggest key to your success so far?
"I owe much of my success to having been the product of fantastic mentoring from Ellen Zimiles, Guidehouse's Financial Services Segment Leader. I try to pay that forward every day and love to see my staff and their teams develop and mature into the confident professionals that clients praise and look to for guidance, and to solve some of their most complicated problems."
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