Executive Director, Head of Client Service US

BBVA•New York, NY

2d•$185,000 - $225,000•Onsite

About The Position

BBVA is a global company with over 160 years of history, operating in more than 25 countries and serving over 80 million customers. The Client Service team is a new CIB capability in the United States focused on establishing a robust governance model for the client onboarding process. This team will support Coverage, Global Markets, and Global Transaction Banking by providing consistent coordination for client onboarding and lifecycle enablement activities. The team will have end-to-end process ownership, request ownership, and centralized client outreach, aligning with the global Client Service organization to create a scalable and homogeneous model across geographies. The Head of Client Service US will lead the local team embedded within the business and will also personally execute onboarding for institutional clients, leveraging extensive experience in client lifecycle management and senior stakeholder coordination.

Requirements

Significant experience in client onboarding, client lifecycle management, KYC coordination, account opening or related roles within Corporate & Investment Banking
Demonstrated people-management experience, including the ability to build, develop and lead high-performing teams in a complex, fast-paced environment.
Strong understanding of end-to-end onboarding workflows and the interactions among Coverage, Global Markets, Global Transaction Banking, Compliance, Legal, KYC/AML, Risk and Operations.
Experience managing institutional client onboarding and working directly with senior bankers, institutional clients and internal specialist teams.
Ability to manage complex portfolios of concurrent cases while applying sound prioritization, rigorous follow-up and strong attention to detail.
Working understanding of relevant onboarding requirements, including KYC, AML, sanctions, MiFID and EMIR. Deep technical expertise in each specialist domain is not required.
Strong process governance, stakeholder management, escalation and change-management capabilities.
Experience using workflow management tools, reporting dashboards, Microsoft Office, Google Workspace and AI-enabled productivity tools.
Fluent English required

Nice To Haves

Spanish is considered a plus.
Executive presence and excellent communication skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships with clients, senior bankers and specialist teams.
Strong client-service orientation, sound judgment and a high degree of ownership and accountability.
Proactive, solutions-oriented leadership style, with the ability to influence across teams without direct reporting lines.
Transformation and change-oriented mindset, with the ability to embed a continuous-improvement approach in the onboarding process.
Ability to work under pressure, manage competing priorities and drive decisions and actions to completion.
Collaborative mindset and comfort working across functions, products and geographies within a developing global operating model.
High level of professionalism, responsiveness and attention to detail.

Responsibilities

Lead and develop the US Client Service team, setting clear priorities, allocating work and ensuring strong day-to-day management of professionals supporting Coverage, Global Markets and Global Transaction Banking.
Coordinate with business teams to identify relevant changes to the onboarding process arising from the launch of new products or new business activities.
Own the end-to-end governance of client onboarding and lifecycle enablement requests, from initial intake through completion, including new client onboarding, new product enablement and ongoing client enablement activities.
Act as the accountable owner of each request once accepted, ensuring that data is complete, accurate and sufficiently robust for the process to progress efficiently through the specialist teams.
Act as the single operational point of contact between BBVA CIB and the client until onboarding completion, coordinating documentation requests, resolving operational questions and managing communications with the appropriate internal stakeholders.
Personally manage complex institutional client onboarding cases, working directly with Global Bankers, clients and internal teams to ensure a seamless onboarding experience.
Coordinate dependencies and priorities across specialist teams, including KYC/AML, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Operations, Tax and relevant technology or registration teams. The role coordinates and escalates; specialist teams retain technical ownership and decision-making within their respective areas.
Supervise case progress, identify bottlenecks early, follow up proactively with teams involved and lead working sessions to unblock exceptions or complex situations.
Provide guidance to business teams on how to submit onboarding requests and manage rejections or rework arising from data-quality or completeness gaps.
Ensure required registrations are requested in systems that are not directly integrated with the request entry process, including relevant operational platforms.
Establish service-level expectations, monitor adherence, manage escalations and provide transparent status visibility to business stakeholders and senior management.
Monitor KPIs, analyze pain points and lead continuous improvement initiatives to reduce turnaround times, improve operational excellence and support scale and process harmonization.
Represent US Client Service in the development of the global operating model, sharing local insights, adopting common standards and contributing to global governance, procedures and training materials.
Maintain a strong control environment by ensuring requests are handled in accordance with internal policies, procedures and applicable regulatory requirements.