Financial Crime Escalations Analyst

Analyst, LOD1 Financial Crime Escalations

Join Zepz: Breaking Down Borders, Together

Our Meaningful Mission
At Zepz, we're all about breaking down barriers for our customers and our teammates. Our purpose is deeply personal, we provide a lifeline and deliver opportunities to cross-border communities that need it most through cutting edge finance and tech. Zepz is the power behind WorldRemit and Sendwave,  driven by the mission to celebrate the incredible impact migrants have, both at home and abroad. We're not just moving money; we're building a world that truly recognizes and supports global connections.

Who You'll Be Joining
We look for mission-driven builders who thrive in a fast-paced environment connected to a true purpose. We’re an always developing team of experts that enjoy problem solving and bring clarity to tough challenges. At Zepz, we are Relentless Learners, always seeking feedback, and  Responsible Owners, treating company resources like your own. We depend on Transparent Communicators who keep the team aligned through open, honest talk.

Our Core Commitments — What We Live By
Our vibrant and truly diverse culture is built on three core commitments, that guide how we work and interact:

• Integrity: We always do the right thing. It’s simple, but it’s the foundation of everything we build for our customers and each other.
• Outcomes: We work for our customers. Their success and prosperity are the results we focus on delivering.
• Velocity: We are fast! We maintain high energy levels and make smart decisions quickly, keeping us nimble and ahead of the curve.

Perks of Joining Our Team
We believe in empowering colleagues because we genuinely trust our team. Our culture is founded on this high trust, which naturally encourages the high ownership that drives us to meet our shared high expectations and deliver high performance. Our culture means you have the flexibility to work in your employing country wherever you feel the most focused and productive. This freedom comes with wonderful tailored, location-specific perks designed to support your whole life, not just your work. Think unlimited annual leave , great healthcare benefits, and employee discounts. We want you to thrive and focus entirely on making your biggest impact! In turn, we expect you to bring high ownership and commitment to your work. This is a place where we value trust and high performance, and we'll provide the environment and support needed for you to excel.

About the role
As a Financial Crime Escalations Analyst, you'll be the expert reviewer for our complex and high-risk financial crime cases. You'll investigate escalated alerts across multiple regulated markets and assess exposure to money laundering, fraud, sanctions evasion and other typologies. You'll make well-reasoned, defensible decisions in line with regulatory requirements and our risk framework.

You'll also help make our detection smarter. Your investigation findings and judgment calls will feed back to Product Engineering and Risk as "human-in-the-loop" input for our AI-driven detection models, so we can keep pace with emerging threats.

You'll work closely with Financial Crime Operations leadership, Risk, Compliance and cross-functional partners to make sure investigations are accurate, well documented and completed on time.

What you'll do
Investigate and decide

• Investigate complex and high-risk alerts and escalations end to end, looking across customer activity, transaction behavior and linked accounts or recipients.
• Apply layered risk analysis across customer profile, transaction patterns and typology indicators to spot suspicious activity such as structuring, high-velocity activity and multi-account networks.
• Carry out Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) where required.
• Make risk-based decisions under internal policy and regulatory obligations, using sound judgment where procedures don't fully cover the scenario.
• Decide when to close, request more information, or escalate to second-line teams, balancing compliance with customer impact and operational efficiency.

Document and report

• Write clear, defensible case narratives that record findings and the rationale for your decision.
• Build structured case files to support SAR/STR filing where applicable.
• Keep accurate records in our case management systems, to internal quality and regulatory standards.

Improve detection and controls

• Give structured feedback on false positives, missed patterns and model behavior to Product Engineering and Risk, to help refine AI-driven detection.
• Track emerging typologies and red flags relevant to cross-border payments, and share what you learn with the team.
• Take part in quality calibration sessions and process improvement initiatives, and coach peers on complex cases.

Deliver consistently

• Manage your case queue to agreed productivity and quality standards across varying complexity levels.

What we're looking for
Essential

• Experience in financial crime investigations, AML, fraud or sanctions, ideally in payments, fintech or banking.
• Working knowledge of AML, CDD/EDD, transaction monitoring, fraud detection and common financial crime typologies.
• Sharp analytical skills, with the ability to assess complex, ambiguous scenarios and reach a clear decision.
• Excellent written communication, with a track record of producing high-quality case documentation.
• Attention to detail and a solid grasp of regulatory expectations in [relevant jurisdictions, e.g. UK, EU, US].

Nice to have

• Experience in cross-border payments or money remittance.
• CAMS, ICA or an equivalent qualification.
• Experience with case management or investigation tools such as [tools], and SQL or data analysis skills.
• Experience working with AI or ML-assisted detection, or giving feedback to model or engineering teams.
• Familiarity with regulatory reporting (SAR/STR) across multiple jurisdictions.

How we'll measure success

• Case throughput against agreed targets
• Quality audit scores
• Escalation accuracy
• Compliance adherence and decision quality
• Critical error rate 
• Quality of feedback contributed to detection improvements

AI Literacy & Tools
As Zepz continues to build AI into how we work, we expect everyone to engage with it as a core part of their role. For this position we are looking for:

• A genuine curiosity about AI and how it can be applied in your area of work — from accelerating analysis and insight generation, to improving how we design and deliver processes and communications.
• Practical experience using AI tools in a professional context — whether to connect information, draft content, build frameworks, or create insights from data. We want people who actively use AI to increase productivity, not those who are waiting to be told to.
• Strong AI literacy — an understanding of what AI assistants can and cannot do, how to prompt effectively, and how to critically evaluate AI-generated output before using it.
• Awareness of the ethical considerations and responsible use of AI in the workplace, particularly in the context of sensitive data, customer experience, and compliance.
• Prior experience using Claude (Anthropic) is a nice-to-have but not essential — what matters most is that you are genuinely engaged with AI as a tool, comfortable experimenting, and eager to share what works with your wider team.

If you want to join us in our journey to help break barriers in financial access and improve lives globally, there's no better place or time to join.
Our global team of 800+ people is spread across six continents. We aspire to hire the best mix of people from former Olympians to YouTube influencers and we speak over twenty languages. This incredible diversity isn't a bonus; it's the engine that lets us serve the world.
Ready to Apply? Let’s Go.