About the Role
As a FinCrime Operations Team Lead, 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.
Responsibilities
- 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.
- Demonstrate strong capabilities in timely conflict resolution and foster open communication.
- Guide effective mediation to ensure a positive working environment.
- Unify the team behind shared goals and wider FinCrime/servicing strategies, and drive collective actions.
- Coach and develop a strong team of FinCrime Operations Analysts or Specialists, providing tailored guidance.
- Take swift, decisive action to manage performance issues effectively, ensuring sustained excellence and growth.
- Provide regular, constructive, and actionable feedback to 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.
- 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 to increase operational efficiency or ensure effective cross-team collaboration.
- Provide guidance and support on complex, high-risk cases and escalations.
- Manage timely administrative tasks including scheduling, training, hiring, interviewing, and organizing team activities.
- Measure team and individual KPIs and ensure performance targets and quality standards are consistently met.
- Maintain 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 communicating the importance of quality assurance.
- Conduct regular and impactful one-on-one coaching sessions, providing clear and actionable feedback.
- Ensure tasks are managed timely and aligned with the team’s goals.
- Run team meetings to keep the team updated, share best practices, and enhance team spirit.
- Address underperformance promptly through coaching and setting SMART goals, ensuring all interventions are well-documented.
- Understand and articulate how to move key metrics at team and individual level through efficient performance and task management.
- Act as a subject matter expert in financial crime areas, maintaining sufficient expertise to train, develop, and coach the team.
- Maintain a comprehensive understanding of 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 processes, task management, and other operational areas.
- Escalate tooling or processing incidents, high-risk customer issues, control weaknesses, or other material problems to direct leadership in a timely and informative manner.
- Be accountable for driving 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.
- Take full ownership of team's results, setting targets for improvement, and providing insights to stakeholders.
- Set and progress towards goals, adeptly identifying and resolving blockers or issues to optimize output and results.
- Collaborate closely with stakeholders ensuring clear communication and coordination of actions.
- Ensure initiatives and reports are well documented and communicate to a wider audience in a timely manner.
- 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.
- Leverage strong presentation skills to convey vision and progress.
- Perform additional tasks as assigned by your lead, demonstrating adaptability and a proactive approach.
- Actively participate in meetings, trainings, workshops, and internal events to support broader team and company objectives.
Requirements
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, with the ability to produce clear, concise, accurate, and professional reports, summaries, and customer communications.
- 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.
- Familiarity with money laundering methods and other financial crime trends.
- Ability to build and maintain an environment where your team is incentivized to make decisions and apply a risk-based approach.
- Ability to guide the team on the right course or course-correct swiftly when necessary.
- Punctual, independent, proactive and willing to get things done.
- Strong operational management and tactical decision-making skills.
- Ability to work with tight deadlines under pressure whilst maintaining a high level of quality and competency.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
- Strong organizational skills.
- Great time management.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced and high-pressure environment.
- Ability to multi-task and take responsibility in challenging situations.
- Capable of identifying gaps in policies and processes and providing detailed feedback.
- A strong process-oriented and efficiency-driven mindset.
- Proven track record of taking individual ownership and responsibilities.
- Proven track record of 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.
Skills
- KYC/AML/Fraud/Screening
- Financial crime prevention
- People leadership
- Operational expertise
- Process refinement
- Customer impact prioritization
- Risk management
- Regulatory compliance
- Data analysis
- Stakeholder management
- Communication
- Team management
- Performance management
- Conflict resolution
- Mediation
- Coaching
- Mentoring
- Process improvement
- Tooling improvement
- Quality assurance
- Risk-based approach
- Issue escalation
- Performance metrics analysis
- Analytics tools (looker, superset, or similar)
Location
- US
Work Type
- Hybrid
Experience Level
- 1-2 years of leading small to medium sized teams
Education Level
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business Administration, Law, or related field
- ICA, CAMS, or equivalent certification (KYC/EDD/AML/Fraud/Screening/Risk focused)
Salary/Compensations
- USD 100000 - USD 130000
Benefits
- Click here to see the benefits we offer
About the Company
- Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money.
- Min fees. Max ease. Full speed.
- Wise is on a mission to make people's and businesses' lives easier and save them money when sending money internationally, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments.
- As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money.
- For everyone, everywhere.
Equal Opportunity
- 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.
