Senior Director, Regulatory Compliance

London, England, United Kingdom

12/20/2024

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 100,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale.

Proudly founded in Melbourne, we have a team of over 1,500 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech located across more than 20 offices across the globe. Valued at US$5.6 billion and backed by world-leading investors including Sequoia, Lone Pine, Greenoaks, DST Global, Salesforce Ventures and Mastercard, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you're ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us.

About The Team

The Legal, Risk & Compliance (LRC) team at Airwallex is a collaborative group of legal minds and risk management experts. We're passionate about safeguarding Airwallex's operations, fostering a culture of compliance and ethical conduct, and ensuring we navigate the global financial landscape with integrity. We provide expert guidance and support to all areas of the business, proactively identifying, mitigating, and managing legal and financial risks.

What You’ll Do

This is a perfect opportunity for an ambitious candidate looking to build out and enhance the global regulatory compliance strategy and 2LoD function of a rapidly scaling global Fintech. You’ll implement tools, systems and processes to enhance our current compliance programs, and develop compliance monitoring programs for global payments licensing infrastructure, our new investment firms and broker-dealer and trading operations plus any and all newly established payment companies as Airwallex continues its global expansion This is a role for someone who likes to build and who is a problem solver - you’re someone who easily identifies patterns, trends or inefficiencies and can develop practical, effective solutions. You are independent and self-motivated but an effective team-builder and collaborator. You can get into the weeds of an issue, but know how to pull up and provide crisp, concise, actionable communications for senior leaders.

Responsibilities

• Supervising our global team of Regulatory Compliance Managers who oversee compliance obligations in alignment with applicable local and regional laws across all global locations.
• Enhancing a global compliance monitoring program, building compliance assurance processes and leading the innovation and advancement of the Airwallex Regulatory Compliance department globally.
• Building a sustainable and efficient horizon scanning capability, including coordinating internal efforts between different teams
• Coordinating with peers in APAC, EMEA and The Americas to ensure alignment with global compliance efforts, coordinating with Financial Crime and Risk functions to ensure sound internal control framework with synergies where possible
• Identifying opportunities to use automation, RegTech, genAI and other tools to enhance the quality and efficiency of our global regulatory compliance efforts
• Owning the second line of defence for our regulatory compliance risks, including advising the risk owners to ensure that policies embody the company’s risk appetite and effectively guide first line in managing risks
• Being an advocate for practical approaches to compliance that support the company’s expanding geographical and product scope
• Managing the development or updating of policies, and advising on the development of procedures / SOPs to ensure compliance with laws and regulations for the company’s Americas operations
• Monitoring regulatory trends, supporting government relations, outreach to legislators and regulatory agencies and coordinating responses to regulatory inquiries
• Overseeing regulatory reporting, building processes and automation to ensure further efficiency and sustainable management, coordinating with different functions to streamline the process
• Managing external counsel and consultants on regulatory compliance matters
  
  

Who You Are

We're looking for people who meet the minimum requirements for this role. The preferred qualifications are great to have, but are not mandatory.

Minimum Qualifications

• A minimum of 12 years of relevant experience
• Strong regulatory experience gained in the fintech industry, reputable law firms or financial institutions
• Sound knowledge of the global financial services regulatory environment, particularly payment regulations and, ideally, familiarity with MiFID,
• Experience managing an international compliance function, including people management
• Demonstrated experience working cross-functionally or in a matrix organisation
• Experience engaging with the global regulators across Asia, The UK and Europe and The Americas.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Sound knowledge of the global payment services regulations and related legislation
• Experience developing and/or deploying RegTech tools
  
  

Equal opportunity

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary.