FinCrime Operations Senior Analyst - PEP/AM

Wise PLC•Austin, TX

68d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a FinCrime Operations Senior Analyst, you will play a vital role in safeguarding Wise and its customers by identifying and mitigating financial crime risks. You will be responsible for conducting thorough alert and escalation reviews, investigations, analyzing customer activities, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and internal policies. This role offers an excellent opportunity to develop your expertise in financial crime operations and contribute to maintaining the integrity of Wise's services.

Requirements

Strong verbal and written communication skills in English, with the ability to produce clear, concise, accurate, and professional reports, summaries, and customer communications. Additional languages are a plus.
1-2 years of experience in operations, compliance, or a related field, preferably with exposure to financial crime, KYC/AML, or fraud prevention.
Basic understanding of global financial crime regulations, best practices and applicable standards.
Ability to work independently and make decisions within well-defined procedures.
Proven capacity to maintain a high level of quality and accuracy, with a strong commitment to precise process adherence and meeting established standards, even when managing routine tasks or high workloads.
Excellent documentation skills, with the ability to present complex information clearly, concisely, and accurately for both internal and external use, ensuring all decisions are thoroughly supported.
Strong organizational skills with the ability to multitask, prioritize effectively, and manage time efficiently in challenging situations.
Ability to follow established procedures consistently and efficiently, particularly in handling routine tasks.
Willingness to work flexible hours, including shifts, weekends, and public holidays as needed.
Proactive attitude with a willingness to learn and develop in the financial crime domain.
Ability to work autonomously, proactively identifying and addressing tasks independently by applying learned procedures and best practices. This role requires taking initiative and effectively resolving issues within established frameworks.

Nice To Haves

Education: Bachelor's degree in Finance, Business Administration, Law, Analytics, Audit or other related field.
Certifications: ICA, CAMS, or equivalent certification (EDD/AML/fraud/screening/risk and control management/ focused)
Finance/accounting background is a plus.
Familiarity with Business Intelligence (BI) tools such as Looker.

Responsibilities

Investigation and Analysis: Conduct thorough reviews and investigations of customer and payment activity, including their use of Wise products, to determine if behavior aligns with expected patterns or portrays higher-risk flags. This involves applying a deep understanding of Wise's compliance framework, the regulatory environment, and ongoing financial crime trends.
Your key responsibility will be to accurately discount or escalate alerts, focusing on whether potential suspicious activity related to any financial crime is present. Document findings, decision rationale and the steps taken, adhering strictly to established procedures and best practices. The quality of your documentation around decision grounds is paramount.
Due Diligence: Perform meticulous due diligence on customers and businesses, leveraging a variety of publicly available and internal data sources. This includes, but is not limited to, websites, financial statements, and external databases. Your work will focus on establishing connections and gaining an understanding of customer payment behavior and financial activity. You'll apply a robust, risk-based approach to ensure high-quality reviews that are efficient and consistent.
Risk Assessment: Analyze and evaluate risk factors associated with customer profiles and transactions. Document risk assessments clearly and audibly.
Transaction Monitoring: Review customer transaction history, analyzing how they utilize Wise's various products and services. Your goal is to identify unusual patterns or suspicious activities that may indicate financial crime, with a keen eye on the risks and specific weaknesses associated with each product offering that could be exploited for abuse. This requires the ability to effectively digest large volumes of transaction information and draw sound conclusions to either confidently discount alerts or confirm suspicions.
Escalation: Review and assess internal escalations, whether system-generated or from other teams, making informed decisions on the next steps. You will escalate suspicious activities or concerns to the Reporting team, AML and Fraud teams, or other relevant compliance functions as warranted. This includes the timely escalation of very high-profile issues or high-risk customers via established channels to senior roles or functions.
Documentation and Record Keeping: Maintain accurate and detailed records of reviews, investigations, decisions, and customer interactions, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and internal policies and procedures. Keep a comprehensive and clear audit trail of all actions taken, that can also withstand internal and external scrutiny.
Compliance Guidelines: Stay up-to-date with relevant KYC/AML/due diligence/fraud regulations, sector's best practices, market trends, and with changes in typologies and crime trends. Keep up to date with relevant regulations and internal policies, ensuring activities adhere to internal procedures, and external expectations and obligations. This requires taking steps with care, avoiding unreasonable risks and applying the general level of diligence expected from a working professional.
Risk Management and Escalation: Escalate critical incidents, high-risk customers, significant control weaknesses, or material breaches to direct leadership in a timely and precise manner, following established protocols. Identify and raise attention to new typologies or emerging financial crime themes and flag any systemic weaknesses or inefficiencies.
Process Improvement: Contribute to the continuous improvement of FinCrime operations processes by raising issues for process and/or tooling bugs, inefficiencies and suggesting actionable and impactful enhancements. This includes promptly addressing out-of-date processes and ensuring any issues potentially impacting the integrity of reviews are escalated via appropriate internal channels, both within the function and across the wider FinCrime sphere.
Team Collaboration: Collaborate with senior analysts and other team members to support the overall FinCrime operations function. Collaborate effectively across all levels of your team and with other FinCrime functions, ensuring smooth information sharing and fostering a proactive, solutions-oriented mindset. This requires demonstrating high professionalism in all situations to support the overall FinCrime operations function.
Trainings: complete all company-assigned mandatory, refresher or ad hoc trainings on time and with diligence.
Customer Communication: Communicate clearly, professionally, and empathetically with customers via approved channels to obtain necessary details or clarifications for reviews, always upholding our high customer experience standards. A key part of this involves avoiding unnecessary customer contacts and preventing delayed case resolutions. All communication must be precisely tailored to ensure clarity and efficiency.
KPIs: Take a proactive approach to consistently achieve individual and team targets (KPIs, SLAs, QA), demonstrating a strong commitment to both quality and speed. This includes meeting deadlines reliably, optimizing processing times, and taking full ownership and accountability for all responsibilities to deliver exceptional results.
Other: Perform additional tasks as assigned by your lead, demonstrating adaptability and a proactive approach. This includes actively participating in meetings, training, and internal events to support broader team and company objectives.