Branch Risk Officer

Job Description

What’s it all about?

Key leader within Visa, driving the Eurozone risk and regulatory agenda by ensuring alignment with global strategies through leadership, oversight and influence. This is a highly visible role across Visa Europe and Globally, reinforcing the Eurozone view and ensuring interests are considered appropriately across the company.  This position will play a pivotal role in shaping and influencing Visa Europe’s strategic direction and risk management practices on a global scale to meet regulatory needs.

In this role, the Branch Risk officer is the most senior Risk Officer across the Eurozone, responsible for ensuring:

• Ecosystem security, engaging directly with clients and across the business to ensure the 2030 strategy
• Risk Leadership across the Branch, ensuring compliance with SIPS regulation
• while leading on all Risk and Regulatory matters (all ECB and management across JOT (joint oversight team) countries).

Whilst this is an independent second line role, the Branch Risk Officer is both a key advisor to the Branch Manager, ensuring overall health & success and to the Chief Risk Officer Europe.

This is a key role in bringing Eurozone risks to the forefront of consideration, advocating for necessary actions to be address where they are required.

This role requires a dynamic and strategic leader who can navigate complex regulatory environments and drive impactful risk management initiatives across Visa's European and global operations.
Specific responsibilities include:

• Key member of the Branch Manager’s Leadership Team
• Collaborating with VEL & Global colleagues to ensure alignment across Europe
• Build strong relationships with the Eurozone senior leadership teams and relevant Regional Managing Directors (RMDs) to deliver successful risk outcomes for the Eurozone, and specifically in relation to the JOT countries
• Develop clear and concise executive level communications. Communicate recommendations to senior management, other executive, functional, or regional staff and management in a clear, concise and impactful way
• Lead and coach a high performing team, empowering employees to be accountable in delivering on key results and upholding our leadership principles.
• Attend and represent the Eurozone at VEL risk committees, ensuring that the Eurozone risks and issues are appropriately represented and discussed
• Deliver second line assurance pertaining to SIPS to the Chief Risk Officer, Executives and the VEL Board and present findings and confidence in remedial action at relevant VEL risk committees.

Core responsibilities (SIPS_

• Lead on risk and regulatory collaboration across VEL to ensure appropriate consideration of Eurozone requirements are met
• Lead the independent second line risk oversight team for the Eurozone, including the oversight of compliance with SIPS regulation
• Lead the identification, assessment, measurement, and management of Eurozone risks
• Responsible for the delivery of SIPS self-assessment to the regulator, including remediation plans
• Create a holistic strategy for Corporate Risk in relation to the Eurozone, to ensure that interlinkages and dependencies for the Eurozone are clear and drive alignment and continuous improvement in risk frameworks and policies
• Responsible for Risk related decision making for the Eurozone markets
• Oversee and lead the operational resilience capability for the Eurozone, attending Europe Crisis Management Team (CMT) meetings, and leading Eurozone specific topics at these meetings
• Create clear strategic priorities for the business and align resources accordingly. Ensure that decisions are made in a timely manner without over analysing data, hold others accountable for meeting goals
• Drive new regional Risk initiatives to achieve strategic risk outcomes with our regulators. Apply a variety of frameworks and strategies to solve business problems and opportunities
• Design and implement a strategy to ensure operational risk events and near misses are tracked. Through the team, ensure the changes needed to address these issues are implemented.
• Lead and own the protection of the ecosystem for the Eurozone especially in relation to incentives for clients to limit risks, including effective, proportionate and dissuasive financial penalties for loss sharing 
• Define the third parties that pose the greatest risk to the Eurozone and Visa operations in the Eurozone including the oversight of and collaboration with the VEL TLMP team
• Understand and identify key players in the Eurozone area that could impact Visa services across the ecosystem for example domestic processors in some Eurozone countries.

Core responsibilities (PISA)

• Key point of contact for ECB supervisory team: This involves being the primary liaison between the organization and the ECB supervisory team. It includes coordinating meetings, facilitating communication, and ensuring that all queries and requests from the ECB are addressed promptly and accurately.
• Monitor Incident Reporting to provide updates to the BoE, ECB, and National Bank of Poland as mandated by the regulators: This responsibility entails overseeing the incident reporting process to ensure that any significant events or issues are reported to the Bank of England (BoE), the ECB, and the National Bank of Poland. It involves compiling and analyzing incident data, preparing reports, and ensuring that updates are provided in a timely manner as required by regulatory mandates.
• Support the Head of Regulatory Risk and CRO in delivery of timely communications with regulators during a crisis: In times of crisis, it is crucial to maintain clear and timely communication with regulators. This responsibility involves assisting the Head of Regulatory Risk and the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) in preparing and delivering communications to regulators, ensuring that all necessary information is conveyed accurately and promptly.
• Ensure timely and appropriate responses are provided to all external regulatory requests: This involves managing and coordinating responses to requests from external regulators. It includes gathering the necessary information, preparing responses, and ensuring that they are submitted within the required timeframes. The goal is to maintain compliance and foster a positive relationship with regulatory bodies.
• Support development of forward-looking agenda for information sharing with key regulators of Visa’s Ecosystem: This responsibility involves contributing to the creation of a proactive and strategic agenda for sharing information with key regulators. It includes identifying emerging regulatory trends, anticipating future information needs, and developing plans to ensure that the organization is prepared to meet these requirements. The aim is to enhance transparency and build trust with regulators.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

• Extensive senior leadership experience, with a combination of Enterprise risk and Operational experience required.
• Strong operational risk experience with a proven track record in implementing change and assurance programmes.
• Extensive operational risk expertise, data and analytical skills.
• Flexible, intellectually curious, creative thinker with the ability to define business trade-offs, generate out-of-the-box solutions and manage uncertainty.
• Ability to lead and influence decisions of others, including European executive team and other partners.
• Excellent people management skills with experience managing and building a high performing team, including recruiting and retaining talent, and developing team members.
• Proven interpersonal and leadership skills with ability to successfully promote collaboration across different teams, cultures, and interface with people at all levels of the organization including senior executives at clients across the Europe region.
• An intellectually curious but humble leader with a high degree of compassion, able to engage, enable and inspire others and intuitively engenders an inclusive environment.
• Strong knowledge on utilizing AI and GenAI to reduce risks.
• Ability to structure and manage complex cross-enterprise projects and processes with multiple stakeholders.
• Superior analytical and problem-solving skills, with demonstrated intellectual and analytical rigor.
• Experienced in leading and executing complex, cross-functional strategic projects.
• Strong interpersonal skills with presence and the ability to clearly communicate compelling messages to senior and executive management, clients, peers, and team members.
• Ability to work with limited direction, usually within a complex and often ambiguous environment, to drive rigorous, fact-based recommendations to senior and executive management, while supporting syndication with stakeholders across the organization.