Head of Financial Crime Operations

About the role

A leading trading platform is looking for a Head of Financial Crime Operations, a new position based in Dubai or London and reporting directly to the VP, Financial Crime. The role owns operational performance and quality, turns policy into working procedures, defines the AI and automation roadmap and works with Compliance and Financial Crime Product so that people, processes and tools keep pace with the business.

Key responsibilities

• Manage operational performance across the customer lifecycle, balancing timely decisions with investigation quality, effective controls and fair customer treatment, using case review evidence and service measure KPIs
• Own Financial Crime operational KPIs, including AI automation and quality
• Translate financial crime policies and control requirements into practical procedures with Compliance and process owners, keeping guidance current and clarifying escalation routes
• Plan staffing, skills and training, anticipate demand and case complexity changes and close capacity gaps before they become backlogs
• Establish an effective quality process, use findings to fix inconsistent decisions and check that training or corrective actions improved work quality
• Work with Financial Crime Product to find weaknesses in tools and workflows, define operational needs, contribute to testing and prepare teams for new capabilities, including approved automation and AI
• Prepare the operation for new products and markets with Compliance, Product and local leadership, and escalate unresolved readiness gaps through the launch process
• Lead the operational response to incidents and material control failures, preserve evidence, involve decision-makers, follow remediation through and support audits and regulatory reviews

Required profile

• Significant experience leading financial crime operations in financial services, fintech, payments or another regulated environment, including managing managers across several teams
• Experience leading teams spread across several countries with consistent standards and decisions
• Track record of setting and running operational KPIs covering timeliness, quality and automation
• Experience working with product and engineering teams on new tools, automation or AI, including requirements, testing and team preparation
• Experience leading incident response and remediation, and supporting internal audit and regulatory reviews
• Nice to have: experience in online brokerage, trading platforms or digital banking; familiarity with financial crime tools for screening, identity verification, transaction monitoring or case management

Required skills

• Customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence, KYC, sanctions and PEP screening, transaction monitoring, fraud and investigations, including suspicious activity reporting
• AML and counter-terrorist financing requirements across several jurisdictions, such as the UK Money Laundering Regulations, the EU AML Directives and their equivalents in Australia, the UAE and the Bahamas

What we offer

• Competitive salary
• Annual leave, employee referral program and paid volunteer days
• Health and pension benefits, plus location-specific perks
• 30 extra days to work remotely from anywhere in the world (some restrictions apply)