About this role
Key Accountabilities
1. Global and Regional KYC Policy
- Draft, review, maintain, and enhance global and regional KYC policies, procedures, standards, control requirements, desktop guides, and operating manuals.
- Interpret global minimum standards and identify country or regional nuances applicable to the UK, Spain, wider EMEA, and other relevant jurisdictions.
- Perform policy gap assessments arising from regulatory change, audit findings, quality reviews, control failures, or operational feedback.
- Manage policy governance activities including stakeholder consultation, approvals, version control, implementation planning, communication, and periodic review.
- Provide practical advisory support on policy interpretation, exceptions, escalations, risk acceptance, and documentation requirements.
- Translate complex regulatory obligations into concise, clear, and operationally workable procedures for first- and second-line teams.
2. Complex Entity and Beneficial Ownership Advisory
- Provide expertise on complex legal entity types, including Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), trusts, foundations, funds, partnerships, holding companies, private investment vehicles, family offices, and financial institutions.
- Assess ownership and control chains to identify ultimate beneficial owners, controllers, board of directors, and authorized signatories.
- Define documentary and verification standards for layered, cross-border, nominee, or otherwise complex structures.
- Advise on CDD and EDD requirements for higher-risk customers, politically exposed persons, adverse media, sanctions exposure, and higher-risk jurisdictions.
- Develop practical decision trees and training material to improve consistency in complex entity reviews.
3. Regulatory Policy and Change
- Monitor, assess, and support implementation of regulatory and industry developments affecting KYC, AML/CTF, sanctions, customer due diligence, beneficial ownership, and tax transparency.
- Apply practical knowledge of relevant frameworks such as UK and EU AML requirements, FCA expectations, JMLSG guidance, Spanish AML requirements, FATCA, CRS, MiFID II, and EMIR, where relevant to client onboarding and lifecycle management.
- Complete regulatory change impact assessments covering policy, process, control, data, technology and training
- Support regulatory reviews, internal audit, compliance testing, quality assurance, remediation program, and closure of management actions.
- Maintain a clear audit trail demonstrating how regulatory obligations have been interpreted and embedded.
4. KYC Platform Testing and Transformation
- Provide policy SME input into KYC / Client Lifecycle Management platforms such as Fenergo, Pega, or comparable workflow and case-management systems.
- Translate policy requirements into business requirements, user stories, decision rules, customer-risk logic, mandatory data fields, document requirements, workflow steps, and control points.
- Validate that platform configuration accurately reflects entity type, jurisdiction, product, risk rating, screening, CDD/EDD, periodic review, and escalation requirements.
- Partner with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Technology, Operations, and Compliance to triage defects and deliver sustainable remediation.
- Identify opportunities to improve automation, data quality, operational efficiency, user experience, controls, and management information.
5. Governance, Controls and Stakeholder Management
- Act as a trusted KYC policy adviser to Compliance, Financial Crime, Legal, Operations, Front Office, Tax, Risk, Audit, and Technology stakeholders.
- Lead or contribute to policy forums, working groups, design authorities, governance committees, testing checkpoints, and implementation-readiness reviews.
- Produce high-quality decks, recommendations, risk assessments, and executive updates for senior stakeholders.
- Develop and deliver training on policy changes, complex entities, regulatory requirements, and system-enabled KYC processes.
- Coach colleagues, review deliverables, and promote consistent risk-based decision-making across locations and business lines.
- Monitor implementation of effectiveness using issues, testing results, quality metrics, KRIs, audit observations, and user feedback.
