FinCrime Operations Team Lead - AML Investigations

About the role

As a FinCrime Operations Team Lead at Wise, 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.

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership: Lead by example, driving a customer-focused mindset across your team and the wider fincrime organization. Foster a high-performance, results-driven culture defined by strong ownership and accountability. Build and nurture high-performing teams that value knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and adaptability in our change-oriented environment. Timely conflict resolution and open communication are essential.
• People Management: Coach and develop a strong team of FinCrime Operations Analysts or Specialists with varying levels of experience. 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: 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 bi-weekly 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. Address underperformance promptly through coaching and setting SMART goals, and ensure 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.

Qualifications

• 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.
• A good understanding of the regulatory framework surrounding KYC/AML/Fraud/Risk and financial crime prevention.
• Familiarity with money laundering methods and other financial crime trends.
• The ability to build and maintain an environment where your team is incentivized 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.
• Punctuality, independence, proactiveness, and willingness to get things done.
• Strong operational management and tactical decision-making skills.
• The ability to work with tight deadlines under pressure whilst maintaining high level of quality and competency.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, strong organizational skills, great time management, and ability to work in a fast-paced and high-pressure environment.
• The ability to identify gaps in policies and processes and provide 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.
• The ability to analyze and move of team’s metrics.

Benefits

For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders — without judgment 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. If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs. Keep up to date with life at Wise by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.