Head of Risk & Compliance (MLRO) - Payments, EMI, Fin-Tech

Location: London (City)

Type: Permanent

Salary: £80-£100k base + bonus & bens

About us:

Our client is a diversified, agile, fast-growing, technology-oriented Fintech company who aim to simplify, innovate, and develop the future of payments & banking technology.

As well as being very well funded & enjoying a leadership team of tech & payments experts, our plans include launching our new regulated product set to market.

As such, we are keen to hire a new Head of Risk & Compliance to work with us on this journey, within a broad ranging Risk & Compliance management role, which would be ideal for an ambitious individual with Payments / Cards / E-Money experience. Previous hands-on experience working in a merchant acquiring, EMI or card issuing business within a risk/compliance role is going to be key.

About the role – what we’d like you to do:

Identify, refine, and implement a robust and commercially focused risk & compliance strategy and maintain an effective risk management framework with supporting policies that identify, assess, control and report on the range of risks and exposures that our company faces. This will involve:

• Maintain the company’s risk governance framework covering risk policies, risk appetite statement & tolerances, risk assessments and risk impact evaluations, internal control systems, risk models, systems and procedures & ensure they are implemented appropriately.

• Manage the Compliance Monitoring Plan and Risk Management Programme to identify, prevent and correct areas of noncompliance

• Prepare monthly risk framework KRIs & KPIs & trends for review with the senior management.

• Ensure risks are actively managed within the business and that any items of concern are escalated.

• Manage the preparation of risk related submissions to the Regulator.

• Maintain a Risk Incident Log to capture the occurrence, management, remediation, and reporting of significant and major risk incidents; serve as the main point of contact for risk alerts, escalations, and actions with partners / regulators.

• Implement a continuous risk assessment of our operating business model, platforms, processes, and people to identify risks and points of vulnerability.

• Ensure effective operational controls are in place that flag operational performance issues and collaborate with functional heads to understand root causes.

• Contribute to the merchant risk assessment profiling and scoring tools and KYC onboarding practices.

• Support the business by providing advice and assistance on application of rules and policies for specific transactions and general business activities based on an understanding of business strategies and regulatory requirements

• Provide support advice and guidance on day-to-day issues arising from AML/Customer Service/Marketing and others in the business

• Ensure familiarity with our products and keep updated on relevant industry risk and compliance issues and solutions

The ideal candidate:

• Hands-on Risk and Compliance experience in the payments industry, particularly from an EMI, cards, processing, acquiring, open banking or issuing environment.

• Positive contributions to meetings/discussions and to add value quickly.

• A self-starter and problem-solver who is creative, can hit the ground running and is hungry to contribute to the group's success story, who can think strategically as well as at a detailed, implementation level

• Strong data analysis capability & clear written, verbal communication and presentation skills with the ability to present management information in a simple and effective way

• Ability to meet tight deadlines and to work in a fast-paced environment - you are likely to be a highly experienced and commercially aware risk expert within the payments, money transfer and EMI space who is excited to get involved with a growth focused fin-tech company with ambitious plans - have an in-depth knowledge of the payments sector, with a problem-solving attitude and commercially, business-growth orientated mindset, with exposure to relevant regulatory bodies