High Risk Assessment Specialist

As a Risk Assessment Specialist, you will play a critical role in ensuring Wise’s adherence to regulatory and compliance standards. You will be responsible for mitigating risks associated with high risk customers, while maintaining compliance with AML/CTF regulations, and internal policies according to Wise’s risk appetite. The Risk Assessment Specialist has an advanced understanding of inherent risks tied with complex business structures, various customer types and activities, country-specific risks and their appropriate mitigating strategies. This role is a great opportunity for people who are interested in deepening their expertise in the KYC/AML domain.

Job Responsibilities

• Act as an end point for all escalations from other compliance operations teams, assessing customers’ risks and applying risk based approach methodologies;
• Mentor and consult other compliance operations teams and act as a subject matter expert in complex cases;
• Perform risk assessment and enhanced due diligence on complex and high risk customers, document and provide thorough analysis on potential risks and apply appropriate mitigation measures by analyzing their business activities, compliance programs and controls;
• Review and analyze documentation, such as AML, Sanctions, EDD, KYC, and Acceptable Use policies (customers under review), comparing them against Wise’s policies and internal risk-based approach;
• Assess the customer’s potential reputational and financial crime risk to Wise from Sanctions, PEP, and adverse media perspective;
• Coming up with new and better risk mitigation methods and improving our compliance framework and controls while working closely with Product and FinCrime;
• Escalate and report compliance concerns to Financial Crime Oversight and other compliance teams where necessary;
• Communicate with internal and external partners/stakeholders to facilitate scalable, compliant business onboarding growth;
• Work closely with other functions to on-board high risk companies, update on review statuses, communicate compliance concerns, and answer queries and concerns from relevant stakeholders;
• Work with product teams, operational leads, and compliance teams to manage operational impact of changes, increase operational efficiencies, and improve the customer experience;
• Be accountable for the quality assurance of the Risk Assessment team, taking decisions within our policy framework, and working with compliance to evolve processes;
• Distill concerns or issues identified from relevant operational incidents and report these findings to senior management with recommended actions to address deficiencies;
• Support team leads on implementation and delivery of ad-hoc project work, participate in enhancing the compliance management knowledge of colleagues;
• Assist the team at various deep dives and audits at regional level when required.