Fincrime Operations Team Lead

Job Description

Role & Job purpose

As a FinCrime Operations Team Lead - Sanctions you will develop and oversee the daily operations of a team of FinCrime Operations Analysts or Specialists. Your primary purpose is to ensure the effective mitigation of financial crime risks associated with Wise's customers, while maintaining a strong focus on operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and a customer-centric approach. You will foster a high-performing team, drive operational excellence, and act as a subject matter expert in KYC/AML/Fraud/Screening and financial crime prevention. You will be responsible for ensuring your team meets performance targets, maintains or elevates quality standards, and contributes to a culture of continuous improvement within the FinCrime Operations organization.

The FinCrime Operations Team Lead is a dual-focused leader, combining strong people leadership with domain and operational expertise. You will be instrumental in building and refining processes that prioritise customer impact while maintaining focus on the evolving risks within the financial services industry, specific product vulnerabilities, and the requirements set by regulations and partners. This includes supporting the development of compliant and scalable processes and possessing an understanding of financial crime risks associated with our customers, products, and tooling.

Job Responsibilities
 

Team Leadership

You will lead by example, driving a customer-focused mindset across your team and the wider fincrime organization. You are instrumental in fostering a high-performance, results-driven culture defined by strong ownership and accountability. This involves building and nurturing high-performing teams that value knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and adaptability in our change-oriented environment. Fincrime Operations Team Lead demonstrates strong capabilities in timely conflict resolution and fosters open communication and guides effective mediation to ensure a positive working environment. You should be visible and actively engaged in team management. Your focus is on unifying the team behind shared goals (and wider FinCrime/servicing strategies) and driving collective actions.

People management
Coach and develop a strong team of FinCrime Operations Analysts or Specialists with varying levels of experience, providing tailored guidance, and taking swift, decisive action to manage performance issues effectively, ensuring sustained excellence and growth. Provide regular, constructive, and actionable feedback to your direct reports. Coach and mentor team members to support their growth, develop their skills, and help them reach their full potential. Design and manage performance or development plans in identified areas. Conduct career map check-ins and make recommendations for demotions, promotions, salary raises, and other role related decisions.
 

Operational management

You will oversee the daily operations of the team, ensuring adherence to relevant regulations and internal policies and processes. Identify and propose opportunities for process and tooling improvements. Collaborate with central functions and other operational teams as needed to increase operational efficiency or to ensure effective cross-team collaboration on joint initiatives. Provide guidance and support on complex, high-risk cases and escalations. Be on top of timely admin related tasks including but not limited to scheduling, training, hiring, interviewing, organising team activities, and others.
 

Performance management
Measure team and individual KPIs and ensure performance targets and quality standards are consistently met while maintaining focus on customer experience and adherence to internal guidelines. Drive high-quality results for both the team and individuals, continuously enhancing overall quality outcomes. Conduct timely quality reviews, ensuring high decision accuracy and effectively communicate the importance of quality assurance. Conduct regular and impactful one on one coaching sessions (usually on a weekly or biweekly basis), provide clear and actionable feedback. Ensure tasks are managed timely and aligned with the team’s goals. Run team meetings to ensure that your team is kept up to date with the latest information, share best practices and enhance overall team spirit. Addresses underperformance promptly through coaching and setting SMART goals, and ensures all interventions are well-documented. Understand and be able to articulate how to move key metrics at team and individual level through efficient performance and task management.
 

Expertise sharing
Be a subject matter expert in financial crime areas with the ability to obtain and maintain sufficient subject matter expertise required to train, develop and coach your team. Maintain a comprehensive understanding of our regulatory obligations, internal policies, domain-specific processes and best practices. Apply a risk-based approach to deterring and preventing money laundering and financial crime. Perform and support deep dives, understand root causes of problematic cases and propose solutions to senior leadership. Assist senior leadership with reviews and developing our processes, task management and in other operational areas as requested to ensure compliant and effective servicing function

Issue Management and Escalation 

Escalate tooling or processing incidents, high-risk customer issues, control weaknesses, or other material problems to direct leadership in a timely and informative manner, following established protocols.

Planning and execution
Be accountable for driving your direct team's performance outcomes, ensuring key performance indicators (KPIs) are consistently met and enhanced. Possess strong knowledge of team processes and tooling, leveraging data to support initiative execution. This involves taking full ownership of your team's results, setting targets for improvement, and providing insights to stakeholders. Set and progress towards goals, adeptly identifying and resolving blockers or issues, whether performance or metric-related, to optimize output and results.
 

Stakeholder management and communication

Collaborate closely with stakeholders ensuring clear communication and coordination of actions. Your initiatives and reports are well documented and you choose the right platforms to communicate to a wider audience in a timely manner. The documentation has a clear scope and includes potential impact in different areas. You can communicate confidently with difficult stakeholders on varied operational or domain related topics. Proactively work on improving cross-team communication and collaboration, acting as the liaison between different layers of the organization and your own team. Employ impactful and inspiring communication skills, unifying individuals behind shared goals, and leverage strong presentation skills to convey vision and progress.

Other: Perform additional tasks as assigned by your lead, demonstrating adaptability and a proactive approach. This includes actively participating in meetings, trainings, workshops, and internal events to support broader team and company objectives.

Qualifications

Requirements

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, with the ability to produce clear, concise, accurate, and professional reports, summaries, and customer communications. Additional languages are a plus.

• At least 1-2 years of leading small to medium sized teams, preferably in operations. 

• Good understanding of the regulatory framework surrounding KYC/AML/Fraud/Risk and financial crime prevention.

• You are familiar with money laundering methods and other financial crime trends.

• You can build and maintain an environment where your team is incentivised to make decisions and apply a risk-based approach to their work. This involves the ability to guide the team on the right course or course-correct swiftly when necessary, ensuring resources and focus are directed towards the most impactful tasks.

• You are punctual, independent, proactive and willing to get things done.

• Strong operational management and tactical decision-making skills.

• Can work with tight deadlines under pressure whilst maintaining high level of quality and competency.

• You have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, strong organisational skills, great time management, and ability to work in a fast paced and high pressure environment.

• Ability to multi-task and take responsibility in challenging situations.

• You are capable of identifying gaps in policies and processes and providing detailed feedback, including examples when possible, through the established communication channels.

• A strong process-oriented and efficiency-driven mindset.

• Proven track record of taking individual ownership and responsibilities as well as being a great team-player. Ability to deliver constructive, well-evidenced feedback that drives tangible behavioral change and performance improvement.

• Ability to analyze and move of team’s metrics

Nice to have:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business Administration, Law, or related field

• Certifications: ICA, CAMS, or equivalent certification (KYC/EDD/AML/Fraud/Screening/Risk focused)

• Ability to use analytics tools like, looker, superset, or other similar platforms. 

Additional Information

For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders  — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.

We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.
Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.

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