About the Role
The Director, Financial Crimes and Insights will lead a Payments Products team in advancing Payments Canada’s mission to shape the future of payments and ensure a trusted, secure payment system. This role encompasses direct ownership of the Financial Crimes strategy and Fraud Insights, overseeing centralized fraud services and driving program development across key initiatives like the Real-time Rail (RTR). The Director is accountable for coordinating, analyzing data, and executing on fraud work packages, and must leverage effective stakeholder management by collaborating closely with Payments Canada’s cross-functional groups to ensure necessary features, functionality, and supporting structures are successfully implemented.
Responsibilities
- Lead Fraud program development as the Product Owner, ensuring capabilities are fully qualified, business-cased, elaborated, and implemented in alignment with stakeholder needs.
- Provide Director level input into the central fraud services vision, roadmap, requirements, and release plan.
- Serve as the subject matter expert and trusted advisor to the Senior Leadership team on all aspects of fraud management and financial crimes.
- Synthesize stakeholder insights and translate them into problem statements and goal statements for solution identification.
- Develop control journey flows, analyze data, and develop business requirements.
- Build solid relationships with key stakeholders throughout Payments Canada to achieve successful outcomes throughout the product life cycle.
- Proactively manage internal and external interactions.
- Identify and execute opportunities to improve processes and reporting.
- Provide regular status updates on ongoing files, action points, etc.
- Support ad-hoc tasks and projects as required.
- Support the development and submission of corporate planning business cases for central fraud services.
- Take responsibility for the central fraud services product, making strategic decisions and overseeing the product development throughout its life cycle.
- Research and document pre-discovery/discovery phase initiatives for prioritization in the fraud services roadmap.
- Own the end-to-end process of resolving complex business issues.
- Drive product strategy and big-picture thinking with minimal direction from senior resources.
- Provide thought leadership and stay current on emerging trends and developments.
- Provide strong leadership with proven ability to mentor, coach, and elevate the performance of team members.
- Demonstrate critical reasoning, analytical thinking, and the ability to embrace complex and ambiguous situations, translating high-level insights into actionable problem statements.
- Display strong business acumen in the financial services and payments industry, including technical knowledge of digital, payment, and financial technologies, and hands-on experience.
- Own large, complex risks, issues, actions, and decisions from meetings.
- Conduct data analysis and produce meaningful insights.
- Develop fraud control and user journey flows.
- Analyze industry fraud data and identify emerging fraud trends and concerns.
- Review product designs for fraud mitigation and user experience.
- Collaborate with engineering and operational teams to improve user flows.
- Lead the development of user tips, tools, and guides to facilitate positive user experience.
- Analyze and resolve issues and recommend improvements.
- Develop deep product usage insights to steer the roadmap.
- Manage stakeholder interactions proactively.
- Establish and maintain ongoing relationships with internal departments, members, regulators, and vendors.
- Engage independently with internal stakeholders, members, regulators, solution providers, and third-party collaborators.
- Manage vendor relationships and support compliance with Service Level Agreements.
- Establish product management discipline by providing thought leadership and drafting appropriate processes, procedures, and workflows.
- Champion the professional growth and development of the Product Management team, fostering a culture of mentorship and high-performance excellence.
- Provide thought leadership and stay current on emerging trends and developments.
- In-depth understanding of fraud and financial crimes mitigation tools, techniques, and end-user interactions.
- Excellent presentation development skills.
- Business acumen related to the financial services and payments industry.
- Ability to develop user journey flows and write comprehensive descriptions of requirements.
- Highly capable technical acumen with experience in digital, payment, and financial technologies.
- Experience using various product management and delivery tools.
- Critical reasoning and analytical thinking.
- High degree of self-direction.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Ability to build effective working relationships across internal and external stakeholders.
- Demonstrate strategic people leadership by cultivating high-performing talent, championing professional development, and fostering a culture of mentorship and operational excellence.
- Commitment to continuous learning and skills development.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Risk Management, Information Technology and Management, or a related discipline.
- Minimum of ten (10) years of progressive experience in fraud management, Financial Crimes or risk management in the fintech / financial sector.
- Minimum of ten (10) years of experience in a people leadership role.
- Specialized and in-depth expertise in payments, anti-money laundering (AML) detection, financial crime, and fraud mitigation tools and techniques.
- Experience in successfully standing up or leading a new team/program (e.g., Fraud Operations), including establishing procedures and managing recruitment/staffing.
- Advanced data skills preparing, organizing, and summarizing large amounts of information without focusing on statistical modeling and ability to manipulate data.
- Proficiency in data manipulation and data visualization techniques to support fraud insights.
- Experience with end to end execution of product management, preferably with fraud and risk management products.
- Ability to bridge cross-functional teams and vendor teams effectively.
- Ability to make complex decisions in the face of ambiguity.
- Ability to manage uncertainty and synthesize available information on fraud experiences, discern appropriate options, and determine a solution.
- Experience liaising with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
- Accreditation or enrollment in a fraud risk management certification including CFE CFCI and/or CAMS.
- Knowledge of anti-money laundering detection and investigations required.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with experience presenting complex concepts effectively to all levels of the organization (peers, executives) as well as external partners, ecosystem users, and regulators.
- Eligibility to successfully complete background checks that will be carried out by Payments Canada, including criminal, credit, identity, employment, and education checks.
- CAMS accreditation preferred.
- Experience working in a matrix environment and an Agile environment is an asset.
Skills
- Fraud management
- Financial Crimes
- Risk management
- Payments
- Anti-money laundering (AML) detection
- Fraud mitigation tools and techniques
- Data analysis
- Data manipulation
- Data visualization
- Product management
- Stakeholder management
- Leadership
- Mentoring
- Coaching
- Critical reasoning
- Analytical thinking
- Business acumen
- Financial services industry knowledge
- Payments industry knowledge
- Digital technologies
- Payment technologies
- Financial technologies
- Presentation development
- User journey flows
- Agile environment
Location
- Hybrid (remote/office)
Work Type
- Hybrid
- Full-time
Experience Level
- Director level
- 10+ years of progressive experience in fraud management, Financial Crimes or risk management
- 10+ years of experience in a people leadership role
Education Level
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Risk Management, Information Technology and Management, or a related discipline.
Salary/Compensations
- $143,650 starting rate
Benefits
- Flexible, hybrid (remote/office) environment.
- Competitive compensation package, including annual variable bonus and defined contribution pension plan with employer matching percentage (if eligible).
- Comprehensive health and dental benefit coverage, including mental health coverage, life insurance and a health spending account for you and your dependents (Permanent and temporary employees with contracts 12 months and over).
- Paid time off: minimum four weeks paid vacation, sick and personal days, December holiday shutdown and cultural holiday observance days.
- 26 weeks of paid maternity and parental leave top-up (if eligible).
- Rewards and recognition program.
- Access to office gym facilities.
- Internal and external professional development opportunities.
- Fun team and organizational events.
- Monthly all staff forums led by our Executive Leadership Team.
About the Company
- Payments Canada is at the forefront of the Canadian payment ecosystem, making payments easier, smarter and safer for all Canadians.
- We own and operate payment systems that process hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of payment transactions every business day.
- We convene ecosystem participants to discuss their multiple and diverse interests and ideas and to navigate industry-level challenges.
- Our values are: Inspire trust, build community and enable change.
- We have created a culture that fosters authenticity, collaboration, innovation and development.
- We empower one another, make meaningful contributions that not only impact the organization, but our country!
- We develop and nurture meaningful connections that drive innovation in our ecosystem.
Equal Opportunity
- We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company.
- Our recruitment process uses automated tools, but not generative AI, to objectively screen and evaluate applications and confirm that a candidate’s qualifications meet job requirements.
- Our trained recruitment professionals and hiring managers always make the final hiring decisions.
- We are committed to making everyone feel they can be themselves and thrive at work.
- We will continue to build on a foundation of respect and appreciation for diversity in all forms and collectively create an inclusive and equitable culture where our differences are valued.
- We are committed to employment equity and actively encourage applications from women, Aboriginal people, persons with disabilities and visible minorities.
- If selected for an interview, please advise us if you require special accommodation by emailing hrinfo@payments.ca.
- Preference will be given to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
