Compliance Lead

📋 Description

• • Allica Bank is on a mission to support established Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), a segment historically underserved by both traditional banks and modern fintech solutions. As the UK's fastest-growing company and a pioneering fintech firm, Allica is revolutionizing financial services for these vital businesses.
• • This pivotal role of Compliance Lead offers a unique chance to architect and implement the compliance and financial crime framework for Kriya, Allica's innovative suite of invoice finance, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), and embedded credit products.
• • You will be instrumental in translating and integrating the bank's overarching enterprise-wide compliance and financial crime policies into a practical, product-specific framework. This ensures robust alignment with the bank's risk appetite while meticulously addressing the distinct operational and customer risks inherent in embedded finance and invoice financing.
• • Your role transcends mere policy adherence; you will act as a crucial bridge, ensuring regulatory consistency, auditability, and control within a rapidly scaling product environment, thereby enabling sustained commercial growth.
• • As the designated Compliance Manager for Kriya, you will oversee its status as an Annex 1 business registered with the FCA for AML supervision, ensuring all activities meet stringent regulatory standards.
• • You will own the complete end-to-end Compliance and Financial Crime Framework for Kriya's digital lending products, encompassing Embedded PayLater and Invoice Finance.
• • A key responsibility involves implementing, adapting, and operationalizing the Bank’s group compliance, AML, sanctions, and financial crime policies. This ensures their consistent and proportionate application across the Kriya product suite.
• • You will proactively identify areas where product-specific controls, procedures, or interpretations are necessary, managing these through the bank's established governance and approval processes.
• • In your capacity as Kriya's financial crime manager, you will hold accountability for AML/CTF compliance under the Money Laundering Regulations (MLRs), including the critical oversight of Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) decision-making, escalation, and reporting.
• • You will ensure that Customer Due Diligence (CDD/KYC), sanctions screening, Politically Exposed Person (PEP) identification, and transaction monitoring processes are fully aligned with bank standards, risk appetite statements, and escalation thresholds.
• • Maintaining strong oversight of any outsourced or technology-enabled financial crime controls will be a core function.
• • You will serve as the primary compliance and financial crime advisor to the product, engineering, and commercial teams, offering clear, pragmatic guidance on how bank policies apply to new products, features, customer segments, and distribution models.
• • Supporting product launches and change initiatives will involve conducting thorough compliance risk assessments, securing necessary approvals, and providing documented sign-off.
• • Owning product-level compliance risk assessments, control mapping, and issue management ensures alignment with group risk frameworks.
• • You will manage the compliance monitoring programme for the product suite, ensuring that all findings are meticulously tracked, remediated, and reported in accordance with bank standards.
• • Ensuring all compliance documentation, management information (MI), and controls are audit-ready and defensible to internal audit, external audit, and regulatory bodies is paramount.
• • Acting as a key interface between Kriya and the bank’s central Compliance, Risk, and Financial Crime teams will foster seamless collaboration.
• • You will manage regulatory interactions pertinent to AML supervision, including FCA correspondence, audits, or thematic reviews, in close coordination with the central bank teams.
• • Contributing to group-wide financial crime and compliance initiatives where your specific product expertise is valuable will be expected.
• • Embedding a robust compliance and financial crime culture within the product division through targeted training, ongoing guidance, and proactive engagement is essential for success.
• • Building scalable compliance processes that can grow alongside the business, while remaining firmly anchored to established bank policy, will be a key achievement.
• • This role demands a proactive, detail-oriented individual who can navigate complex regulatory landscapes and translate them into actionable business strategies, fostering a culture of compliance and enabling Allica Bank's continued growth.