Head of Monitoring and Screening Operations (Financial Crime)

• Are you curious, excited by experimentation and always looking for a better way of doing things?
• Do you want to keep learning and developing whilst getting hands-on experience working in the embedded payments space?
• Do you want to work in a high-growth environment with a fast-paced and collaborative culture where you will work with some fantastic clients and partners?

If so, we would love to hear from you!

We are looking to hire ambitious, and value-adding talent to join Modulr, the fastest growing payments business in the UK and Europe, to drive our Financial Crime Monitoring, Screening and Fraud Prevention activities; a vital set of activities within the organisation.

This role will have teams based in Edinburgh and Mumbai. We are looking for an Edinburgh based candidate to leverage our “Office First” strategy.

About us

At Modulr, our vision is a world where all businesses are powered by embedded payments.

Modulr enables thousands of businesses, from SMEs to Enterprise, across the UK and Europe to efficiently pay-in, collect and disburse funds instantly via a range of payment methods, accounts, and card products.

We have created an industry-leading platform with comprehensive online tools and API access, to meet the demands of daily business payments. We are connected to an expanding network of accounting and payroll platforms, including Sage, Xero, BrightPay and IRIS. Our payments expertise and extensive product capability also enables us to build tailored solutions to solve complex payment problems for hundreds of clients in a range of industries, including Travel, Merchant Payments, Lending, Wage Advance, and Investment & Wealth.

We are deeply integrated into the payment eco-system. In the UK, we are direct participants of Faster Payments and Bacs, and hold settlement accounts at the Bank of England. Our payment network connectivity includes CHAPS, Open Banking, SEPA, SWIFT and account issuance in 11 currencies. We are principal issuing members of Visa and Mastercard across UK and Europe.

Our regulatory permissions and governance structure underpin our business. We are regulated and supervised as an Authorised Electronic Money Institution (AEMI) in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority and in the Netherlands by De Nederlandsche Bank.

Our founding team has a wealth of experience in the payments industry and growing successful businesses. Modulr is backed by the venture arms of payments giants PayPal and FIS, as well as growth investors Blenheim Chalcot, General Atlantic, Frog Capital and Highland Europe.

Modulr now has over 400 employees spread globally across offices in London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Mumbai.

Modulr values

• Building the extraordinary and going that extra mile.
• Owning the opportunity, be passionate and proud of the time you invest.
• Move at pace, reach your goals faster with us supporting you each step of the way.
• Achieve it together, working as a team and being a Modulite. 

The role

Key responsibilities:

The Head of Monitoring and Screening Operations, which reports into the COO, is an exciting role within Modulr which takes responsibility for running and evolving the overall Line 1 Financial Crime operations, covering all monitoring, screening, and fraud prevention activities. The role is aiming to continually deliver on and improve our detection and prevention of financial crime.

This pivotal role is critical to both protecting the business and the broader ecosystem by ensuring that we have robust controls in place, but also delivering on our brand promise by ensuring smooth, seamless, and high-quality customer experiences.  As such, it has the scope and potential to have a material impact on the business.

This role has responsibility for the holistic span of post-live Financial Crime Operations within Modulr. This is currently delivered by three teams:

• Transaction Monitoring; reviewing transactions based on flags and alerts raised manually and through various tools and systems, to detect and prevent financial crime including money laundering and fraud. 
• Screening; screening of both customers and payments, the screening team review alerts based on various negative lists, from Sanctions and PEPs through to negative media, and work to discount or validate alerts and take appropriate follow-on actions including blocking and reporting where needed.  
• Fraud processing and investigations; managing post-fraud processes including liaison with other financial institutions to recover funds, raising chargebacks, investigating cases to identify potential control improvements and any linkages within the platform, and reporting to appropriate authorities. 

In addition to this, the teams also ensure we report outcomes as required to the relevant agencies as it relates to ML/CTF, sanctions and fraud.

The role holder will drive continuous improvement strategies to enhance our detection and prevention capabilities across all areas, taking into account both external market and regulatory changes, as well as internal changes such as product developments and target verticals.  Most specifically in the immediate term, this role will own and drive forward an increased focus on fraud prevention, working in conjunction with other parts of the business including the Line 2 Compliance teams (across both UK and NL).

As part of the delivery of these processes, we use internal Modulr tools and work with various third-party software providers to deliver these activities and controls. The Head of Monitoring and Screening Operations owns these processes in their entirety including ensuring we continually work towards improving our detection, prevention, and false positive rates where possible and appropriate to do so, whilst also maintaining robust controls.  This includes working with Modulr Product and Technology teams, as well as third party providers, to achieve these outcomes.

Whilst this role will specifically focus on the operational elements of monitoring and fraud noted above, for success the role holder and their team will need to work with other teams across the business to deliver on the end outcomes.  This includes clear handovers and briefings from CDD and Solution Consulting to ensure monitoring teams understand the profile and expected usage of new clients going live on the Modulr platform, through to ongoing engagement with the Partner Oversight team in relation to our engagement with Partners (third parties who operate under Modulr’s licences and in some instances have transaction monitoring and other controls outsourced to them).  They will also work closely with external stakeholders in the UK and Europe such as the NCA, in industry bodies.

Specific duties: 

Through their ownership of the activities, and leading the teams that deliver these, the Head of Monitoring and Fraud is responsible for:

• Leading and developing a high performing team across multiple disciplines and activities.
• Maintaining and developing operational processes, tools, and services to support safe, rapid business growth whilst enhancing customer experience; delivered efficiently and with high levels of operational rigour.
• Protecting Modulr and the broader ecosystem by delivering detection and prevention activities in line with our agreed policies, risk appetite and regulatory requirements, maintaining the right level of control across all transactional activity.
• Making Modulr’s financial crime monitoring, and prevention approach a commercial enabler and advantage.
• Delivering a high-quality client experience, ensuring processes and touchpoints are efficient and seamless, and teams are professional and focused on delivering high quality service and outcomes.
• Managing performance across teams through robust training, accreditation, quality assurance and feedback frameworks.
• Developing, monitoring, and maintaining key performance indicators (including internal SLAs) to drive performance, update stakeholders and identify areas for improvement.
• Working with Team Managers to build knowledge and capacity in the teams to provide advisory support to internal and external customers without impacting operational performance.
• Work through Team Managers to drive a culture of continuous improvement, proactively developing teams’ policies and procedures to evolve in line with the business’ strategic growth, both product and country expansion.
• Using data to identify opportunities for improvements, particularly in control outcomes, service quality and efficiency. Working with the Product team to establish and drive initiatives to deliver on these.
• Work cross-functionally with key stakeholders in Line 2 Compliance (across both UK and NL), CDD, Account Managers and Client Service Managers as well as Product to continuously improve the end-to-end client experience and develop an industry leading experience supported by technology.
• Working with Line 2 to establish and maintain a clear risk appetite, including processes and thresholds for escalation and application of restrictions, and ensure this is understood and adhered to across all teams.
• Feeding into relevant internal governance forums and reporting.
• Actively engage with external parties including regulators, agencies, law enforcement and industry bodies, and through doing so ensure that Modulr becomes a trusted partner. 

About you

The successful Head of Monitoring and Screening Operations will have a track-record in delivering results in a fast-moving business and hence be comfortable with change and uncertainty. A strong focus on operational rigour and efficiency as well as excellent stakeholder management experience is essential to being successful in this role.

The ideal candidate will be/have:

• Expert in operational and leadership management practices.
• Demonstrable experience in automation and use of tooling to achieve improved outcomes, both in terms of efficiency and control effectiveness, including alert tuning experience.
• Experience of engaging with external stakeholders such as regulators, law enforcement and industry bodies, to strengthen relationships, drive understanding and share best practice.
• A knowledge of key regulatory principles and requirements with a proven ability to grasp key concepts, interpret these and ensure key outcomes are achieved.
• Proven leader with ability to lead and manage operational experts and customer facing teams, both directly and through managers.
• Desire to lead and manage operational experts and customer facing teams.
• Demonstrated strong leadership and motivation skills and attributes to drive performance of customer facing teams and individuals, including mentoring and coaching ability.
• Strategic and operational communication skills.
• Understanding of the regulatory landscape Modulr operates in, and the controls to keep Modulr and our customers safe.
• Exceptional communication, interpersonal and presentation skills.
• First class planning, high attention to detail and effective organisational skills.
• Ability to deliver high level of performance on a shared services basis to our UK and Dutch regulated businesses – delivering in an efficient and operationally rigorous manner with supporting data to meet reporting needs.

What can Modulr offer you:

You will be part of a cross disciplinary team(s), with co-workers located in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and/or India. We are friendly and sociable, challenging but rewarding. We want you to push yourself and for us to support you in your future as we scale up and grow. Our culture and values are putting you first and are about investing in your future.

• Share Options Incentive Scheme.
• Company Bonus - the more successful we are together; the more company bonus we offer.
• Flexible benefits - £1000 to spend on a variety of benefits for you to choose from which suit your lifestyle and needs.
• Perkbox - enjoy freebies and discounts on many other products and services.
• 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) + your birthday off - choose which days you take off to relax and/or spend time with loved ones.
• Learning Opportunities – on joining Modulr you will embark on our 3-day onboarding programme, called ModStart, to be equipped with the Modulr know-how and arm you with the tools you need to be successful from day 1! But we do not want your learning to stop there so we will continue to provide you with the tools and capabilities through our learning channels, platforms, and Buddy allocation to allow you to grow and develop in Modulr.
• Modulr All hands - join your colleagues for our company wide events throughout the year.
• Great workspace - Modulr thrives on innovation which is best done through in-person collaboration. This approach enables us to work together closely, exchange ideas, and create innovative solutions that drive our success. We ask our team members to be based in the office 4 or more days a week. We have state of the art offices located in WeWork in Edinburgh, ScaleSpace in London, and WeWork in Amsterdam.
• Bike to work scheme.

ModInclusion

We believe that by seeing Modulr, and the world, from all sorts of angles, we can make life better for all.​ We want you to know that the things that make you, you — like your identity, age, ability, and background — are things that we will always celebrate and support with open arms.  As such, we are keen to maximise the diversity of our workforce and actively encourage applications from anyone and everyone.

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