Global Head of Financial Crime Strategy
Nium
Accounting & Finance
Singapore
About the role
As the Global Head of Financial Crimes Compliance, you are the architect of our global financial crime combatting strategy. Your mission is to empower our MLROs and Country Compliance Officers by providing them with a world-class, tech-driven framework, unified policies, and scalable tooling. You build the global standards and systems that ensure our in-country Compliance leaders succeed in meeting regulatory expectations, including audits and inspections.
Key Responsibilities
Global Standard Setting: Develop and implement a group-level AML/CFT control framework tailored to a diverse portfolio of payments services, cards, and emerging products, ensuring a consistent risk appetite across all entities while allowing for local legal "add-ons."
Systems & Product Enablement: Partner with Product and Engineering to build a "Global Compliance Stack." You own the global requirements for our proprietary or vendor-led KYC, screening, and advanced transaction monitoring leveraging AI / ML.
Vendor Engagement: Stay abreast of the latest tools and providers in the industry for FinCrimes Compliance and lead the technical selection for FCC vendors ensuring quality and cost-efficiency, with global scale.
Global Strategy & Governance: Develop and implement a group-level AML/CFT control framework tailored to a diverse portfolio of payments services, cards, and emerging products.
Risk Management: Conduct regular global and regional risk assessments; maintain oversight on complex investigations and filing of Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs/SARs).
Leadership: Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing, cross-border compliance team, fostering a culture of "Challenge, Escalate, and Respect".
Operational Oversight: Drive continuous improvement in KYC/CDD/EDD workflows, rule validation, and back-testing to ensure controls remain effective during rapid scaling.
Requirements
Experience: 12+ years of senior compliance leadership within a global payments firm, fintech, or international bank.
Industry Expertise: Familiarity with the FinCrime regulations around the world, including Payment Services Act, BSA/USA PATRIOT Act, and evolving international cross-border payment standards.
The "Architect" Mindset: You have 15+ years of experience, but you’ve moved past manual reviews. You think in terms of scalable systems and automated workflows.
Influence without Authority: Proven ability to lead a matrixed organization where regional MLROs have local accountability but look to you for functional direction and "best-in-class" tools.
Fintech Native: You understand the nuances of high-velocity payments, crypto-linkages, and digital-first onboarding.
Crisis & Advisory: You are the "Level 2" escalation point for complex, cross-border financial crime cases that span multiple jurisdictions.
Time-to-Market: Speed at which a new country can "plug in" to the global FCC stack and go live.
Platform Health: Significant reduction in manual work for regional teams through automation and high-fidelity alerting.
Audit Readiness: 100% consistency in global data standards during any regional regulatory examination.
Detection Effectiveness: High "true positive" rate in transaction monitoring and significant reductions in false positive alerts.
Regulatory Standing: Zero major findings in regulatory audits and successful expansion into new markets via timely licensing.