UK Financial Crimes Manager

Job Description

About us

We're a global leader in account-to-account payments, making it easy for merchants to collect both recurring and one-off payments directly from customers' bank accounts. Our global payments network and technology platform take the pain out of getting paid for 70,000 businesses worldwide, from multinational corporations to small businesses. Each year we process US$30 billion of payments across more than 30 countries. We're headquartered in the UK, with additional offices in Australia, France and the United States.

The Financial Crime Risk Team

We’re part of the Risk Organisation and are at the forefront of GoCardless’ global expansion. We ensure that GoCardless adopts, implements and maintains innovative and appropriate processes and controls, paving the way for our company to deliver superb products in a compliant manner.

The Role

The U.K. Financial Crime Risk Manager will report directly to the Group MLRO and will play both a regional and global role. The U.K. Financial Crime Risk Manager will be primarily tasked with building and maintaining effective AML/CTF and sanctions systems and controls to ensure compliance with laws and regulations in the U.K. and other GoCardless geos. Your responsibilities will include:

The day to day stuff:

• Closely follow legal, compliance, and regulatory developments in relation to AML/CTF and sanctions in the Fintech industry, to ensure our processes keep pace;
• Advising on CDD escalations based on internal policies and procedures;
• Monitoring and responding to AML / Sanctions related escalations in JIRA;
• Review and approval of high risk customers at onboarding (e.g. PEPs);
• Review and approval of requests for waivers, dispensations and minor policy exceptions from the first line defence;
• Providing financial crime management information to senior management, analysing trends and recommending enhancements to first line controls;
• Deliver targeted financial crime training to the Compliance Operations team and Sales team on areas that are identified as requiring improvement;
• Executing the firm’s annual financial crime Enterprise Risk Assessment, including risk identification, inherent risk assessment and control evaluation;
• Draft annual external reports to regulatory authorities, and liaise with the FCA, NCA and other external agencies where applicable;
• Promoting a culture of good financial crime management across the firm;
• Cover MLRO annual leave / absences;

Project work:

• Support on the Financial Crime Risk roadmap project to design and deploy control enhancements throughout the company;
• Objective & Key Result tracking - tracking progress against 6-monthly goals set at the team level, and coordinating within the organisation to accurately provide progress updates.

Desired Skills

• You have at least five years experience in financial crime within an FCA regulated financial services firm or consultancy;
• You have strong knowledge of JMLSG, FCA, FATF, Wolfsberg Group etc. guidelines and requirements;
• You have experience in designing internal controls from scratch and driving their implementation;
• You have experience conducting AML/CTF and sanctions compliance monitoring reviews and/or audits;
• You have exceptional writing and presentation skills;

Bonus points if:

• You have a professional qualification from an internationally recognised body (e.g. ICA, ACAMS);
• You have worked within a fast growing, scale-up business;
• You have good knowledge of French and/or US financial crime regulations;
• Experience in managing or coordinating 6-12 month projects with multiple stakeholders.

Life at GoCardless

When it comes to culture, we're proud of what we call the 'GC magic'. It's primarily defined by our values: Start With Why, Be Humble, Act with Integrity, and Care Deeply. They've been our bedrock since day one, and they continue to be one of the key factors of our success, and the reason we love showing up to work every day.

Because we're now delivering on our important, and ambitious vision to become the world's account-to-account payment network, we're working at pace. To help clear the path to success - so any obstacles and blockers don't slow us down - we've introduced our own set of operating principles, which live alongside our values. They're designed to help us successfully navigate our continued growth by helping us work together better. They provide guideposts around some of the key areas of how we operate so things are smoother, easier and ultimately lead to better outcomes. Read more about our values and operating principles here.

There's lots more to the magic. We view Diversity and inclusion as a business imperative, so we have a leader whose role it is to ensure we create an inclusive workplace where people from all backgrounds can thrive, and where people from all walks of life want to join us. We also have high engagement with our GeeCee-led 'employee resource groups' (such as BEAM, Inspiring, Pride, and Access) that are supported and sponsored by members of our Exec team. You can view our latest Gender Pay Gap report here.

We've also rolled out our 'Adaptive Working' and 'Work Away' schemes. Adaptive Working allows you to work flexibly, and in a way that fits around your lifestyle, whilst still ensuring our teams can collaborate effectively and get together and socialise. Work Away gives the flexibility to work away from your normal country of residence for up to 90 days in any 12 month period.

We also offer enhanced parental leave , pension packages, and you'll receive equity. Having this 'buy in' is a vital part of building a successful business where everybody - regardless of their role - can make a valuable contribution.

There's also our legendary 'GC Fridays'. They're four additional all-company days off every year, giving GeeCees a chance to switch off and relax, as a token of thanks for everyone's hard work and commitment.

Find out more about Life at GoCardless via Twitter , Instagram and LinkedIn .