Deputy BSA/AML Officer

About the role

As the Deputy covering the broader financial crime needs of our function, your core responsibilities will include:

Responsibilities

• Operational Leadership: Lead and empower the financial crimes team, guiding day-to-day operations, allocating resources effectively, and fostering a culture of high performance and continuous learning.
• Strategic Execution: Act as a central, strategic partner to the BSA/AML Officer, connecting the dots across various compliance domains, streamlining department operations, and driving the delivery of programmatic enhancements cross-functionally.
• Audit & Exam Coordination: Serve as the primary focal point for all financial crime-related internal audits and regulatory exams, proactively managing readiness, coordinating stakeholder responses, and ensuring the execution of remediation plans.
• Control Environment Oversight: Maintain rigorous oversight of our financial crime controls, ensuring they are continuously monitored, tested, and optimized so our defensive framework remains robust and scalable.
• Supervising appropriate measures to ensure that financial crime risks are taken into account in our day-to-day operations.
• Providing advice and guidance to other teams and key stakeholders—regionally and globally—on BSA, AML/CTF, and OFAC sanctions regulations, as well as related Wise policies and procedures.
• Challenging first-line teams on the development of controls and providing approvals on any control changes, new products, or features.
• Representing financial crime compliance oversight both internally and externally to regulators, auditors, and partners as required, showcasing Wise's strong compliance framework.
• Deputising for the BSA/AML Officer as required, ensuring strong oversight of all compliance operations including AML, Fraud, Sanctions, KYC/CDD, and EDD.
• Serving as a member of the US SAR committee and providing feedback to the FinCEN Reporting Team.
• Contributing to the company's Financial Crime Risk Assessment.
• Horizon scanning of new FinCrime regulatory developments and maintaining oversight of the implementation of developments that impact business activities.
• Proactively identifying key areas of risk and working with first-line teams in the development of mitigation plans.

Requirements

• Leadership & Experience: You ideally have experience working in leadership positions within financial crimes at other fintech companies. You also possess 10+ years of experience in financial crime compliance, including direct experience with federal regulators.
• Mindset: You are naturally curious, highly organized, and willing to roll up your sleeves to get the work done.
• Theory: You are an expert in US financial crime regulations, including the Bank Secrecy Act and OFAC.
• Practice: You have demonstrable experience designing and challenging processes, ideally across multiple products, and you have thought deeply about the Wise mission and how it intersects with compliance.
• Passion: You are solution-oriented, get a kick out of improving current practices and processes, and can apply different strategies to develop compliance frameworks.
• Communication: You are a comfortable and effective communicator in both writing and speaking, capable of conveying complex ideas to internal and external audiences.
• Get the job done: You have a sense of urgency and an ability to work well under pressure, prioritizing, taking responsibility, and working to tight deadlines while handling multiple projects at one time.
• Detail: You have meticulous attention to detail.
• Team player: You have great people skills and can effectively and efficiently collaborate and build relationships with colleagues globally.
• Travel: You must be willing to travel to our other offices as required.

Nice to Haves

• Certification as a Global Sanctions Specialist (CGSS), Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), or similar.
• Experience with conducting risk assessments.
• Experience conducting QA/QC on SARs.
• Experience filing SARs or OFAC reports electronically.
• Experience with training/mentoring junior team members.