CTMA Exam Information and Outline
Certified Transaction Monitoring Associate
Syllabus Update Checked on: November 6, 2026
CTMA Exam Syllabus & Study Guide
Before you start practicing with our exam simulator, it is essential to understand the
official CTMA exam objectives. This course outline serves as your roadmap.
The information below reflects the 2026 syllabus defined by
ACAMS.
Below are complete topics detail with latest syllabus and course outline, that will help you good knowledge about exam objectives and topics that you have to prepare. These contents are covered in questions and answers pool of exam.
- Exam Format
- Online, multiple-choice assessment following the self-paced certificate course
- Fundamentals of Transaction Monitoring
- Purpose of monitoring within the AML/CFT program
- Regulatory expectations and the risk-based approach
- Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Typologies
- Structuring, layering, trade-based ML, funnel accounts
- Fraud, human trafficking and other predicate offence indicators
- Transaction Monitoring Systems
- Rule-based scenarios, thresholds and segmentation
- Data quality and system tuning
- Machine learning and advanced analytics
- Alert Review and Investigation
- Alert triage and disposition
- Reviewing customer profiles and expected activity
- Documentation and escalation
- Suspicious Activity Reporting
- SAR/STR decision-making and narrative writing
- Confidentiality and tipping-off
- Quality Assurance and Model Validation
- Above/below-the-line testing and effectiveness metrics