Careers

Location

Amsterdam, NL

Job Term

Full-Time

Company Website

Modulr is looking for an ambitious and experienced compliance professional to join our team in Amsterdam as the Head of Risk & Compliance (Europe). You’ll help support the growth of the European business, whilst protecting us and our customers against financial crime.  

 

About Modulr

Modulr is a fintech scale-up that is breaking new ground within the business payments sector – which moves $130trn annually. And businesses are no longer tolerating the slow, inefficient, and costly infrastructure provided by legacy institutions. Modulr develops cutting-edge API-first services to enable modern business to eliminate historic hidden inefficiencies and build fast-to-market products on top of our award-winning payments platform.

Modulr was one of LinkedIn’s Top 25 Startups to work for in the UK (2019) and was more recently recognised as a 2020 UK Best Workplace in May, 2020.

We were awarded £10 million from the BCR Fund to further develop our innovative product.

  • Four years old, we have offices in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin
  • We have processed over 70 million transactions with a value of £50 billion of business payments to date
  • We are multi-award winning and want to keep creating a world class product

 

About you and the role

The Head of Risk & Compliance and MLRO will be responsible for all compliance and regulatory matters for the European business. Based in Amsterdam, with a reporting line to the General Manager (Europe), this individual will also have a functional reporting line into the Head of Risk & Compliance for Modulr Group.

This individual will:

  • Share and set best practice with Group Compliance and Risk supported by a robust governance framework.
  • Drive a strong Risk & Compliance culture across the business.
  • Design, manage and oversee outsourced services to Group/the UK ensuring consistently high standards of operational delivery covering:
    • Financial Crime – on-boarding of clients and ongoing monitoring to mitigate Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, Fraud and Sanctions risks.
    • Customer support to mitigate any conduct issues.
    • Payment Operations to ensure effective safeguarding and reconciliations processes are in place.
  • Build strong working relationships with external stakeholders including industry bodies, regulators, and law enforcement agencies.

 

Responsibilities

Licence application:

  • Support delivery of Modulr’s EMI application to the DNB – including drafting, revising, or reviewing policies, procedures, etc., working together with the GM, Europe, Group Compliance, the Project Manager, and external counsel to ensure appropriate input from the business and precision/accuracy to meet the requirements.
  • Draft and drive the applications for new services and coordinate and lead freedom of establishment and passporting applications to allow Modulr to extend its services into the rest of Europe.

 

MLRO:

  • Ensuring the Financial Crime programme for the European business and supporting systems and controls are adequate and effective in their design and operation.

 

Compliance programme:

  • Responsible for all elements of compliance reporting.
  • Ensure the completion of regulatory returns and be the key relationship contact for the DNB and any other European regulators.
  • Oversee the preparation of the monthly compliance reports.
  • Present to the Management Board monthly on risk and compliance issues including any recommendations.

 

Develop and maintain a positive compliance culture across the region:

  • Establish and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders across the business.
  • Train and support business areas as required, rectifying issues as they arise.

 

Ensure compliance with relevant regulation and best practice:

  • Build relationships with regulators and lawyers as required both for initial licencing and ongoing requirements.
  • Own timely and adequate response requests from DNB.
  • Identify, ​understand, and communicate relevant regulatory changes and ensure policies and procedures are updated to reflect and are monitored to ensure they are effective in practice.
  • Develop and maintain a hierarchy of policies and procedures to ensure compliance, ensuring policies and procedures are in-line with group requirements and are reviewed at least annually.
  • Monitor the operational compliance services (e.g. Transaction Monitoring) provided by Group to ensure they meet service standards and local regulatory requirements.

 

Oversee Client Complaints:

  • Ensure the agreed procedures for the handling of complaints using a “root cause analysis” approach are adopted by the business and that the best customer outcomes are achieved.
  • Ensure that the Complaints feedback is used to continually improve Modulr’s service.
  • Develop and maintain MI to make the management and Group aware of any areas of concern.

 

MI & Reporting:

  • Develop MI to monitor risks across the European operations and report to the Modulr Europe Board and Risk and Compliance Committee and Boards.
  • Ensure all ad hoc and regular local regulatory reporting requirements are met.

 

Risk Management:

  • Set a risk and compliance framework in-line with Modulr’s principles, culture, and growth ambition.
  • Support the Group’s compliance monitoring programme and ensure key compliance risks are adequately addressed.
  • Implement risk identification, quantification, and control effectiveness measurement framework for the European business.
  • Create and implement policies and procedures to mitigate and manage identified risks – monitoring to ensure these are implemented effectively and work in practice. Where shortcomings in the risk management policies and procedures are identified, establish, and implement improvement measures.
  • Regularly report risks, risk limitations and risk management to local and Group Boards.
  • Support annual risk appetite assessment, design key risk indicators, early warning indicators, and risk response strategies.
  • Own the development and periodic production of European Risk & Compliance KPI reports to be shared with local and Group Boards to understand how the organisation’s risk strategy is working in comparison to established tolerance levels, whether objectives are being achieved and to identify possible modifications to the risk strategy.
  • Oversee business unit testing and monitoring of risks and controls.

 

Skills and experience

  • A minimum 7+ years of experience in a compliance and/or risk function within financial services – ideally payments / EMI experience.
  • Experience dealing with the De Nederlandsche Bank with an understanding of the broader EU regulatory environment.
  • A clear understanding and relevant experience to perform the role of MLRO.
  • Ability to adapt to and lead through fast-paced, high-growth environments.
  • A collaborative approach and strong influencing skills.
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills.
  • Languages:  Dutch & English – essential; German, French and/or Spanish also desired.

 

You’ll be a great fit if:

  • You are passionate about protecting the business, whilst also supporting rapid growth.
  • You love rolling up your sleeves and doing whatever is needed to achieve the goals, whether that is designing the compliance programme, working with a supplier to get the best out of them, or completing customer due diligence and investigating transactions.
  • You are excited about the prospect of taking ownership of risk and compliance for Modulr’s European business, setting out a compliance programme aligned to the business’s growth plans, and executing on that.
  • You are structured and organised, able to handle the competing pressures of immediate compliance tasks and investigations alongside longer term projects.
  • You are comfortable working in an early stage of a business unit, where time is critical, and things can frequently change.
  • You are able to understand regulatory requirements and can confidently engage with the regulator and demonstrate the compliance with them.
  • You act as the compliance representative on projects and providing advice and support to the business on compliance requirements and objectives appeals to you.
  • You are analytical and can assess risks, define appropriate controls to mitigate and communicate the connection, effectiveness, and any potential gaps clearly to others.

 

You’ll need to demonstrate world-class experience in:

  • Assessing the adequacy and effectiveness of measures, controls and procedures put in place to address Modulr Europe’s compliance with its regulatory obligations.
  • Managing effective relationships with regulatory bodies.
  • Developing and maintaining Compliance policies & Processes, Manuals and AML Policies.
  • Being responsible for in the identification, investigation and reporting of financial crime.
  • Providing relevant training and guidance to staff.
  • Communicating new regulatory requirements to the wider business.
  • Experience undertaking Compliance reviews and audits.
  • Risk management, with ability to drive the business unit’s Risk Committee and support the Group Risk Committee.
  • Monitoring outsourced services and ensuring adherence to the local regulatory environment.
  • Defining processes, setting out the optimal way to achieve goals and embedding tools and procedures to achieve that.
  • Having an autonomous, self-starting approach and proven ability to identify and prioritise what needs to be done.

 

In addition to a market leading salary, we offer the following benefits:

Modulr offer highly competitive salary and benefits packages; our employees enjoy the benefits of flexible working. The office is modern, with lots of natural light and has break out areas. Importantly, the work is challenging and interesting, you will gain valuable experience in a rapidly scaling business at an important phase of growth while contributing to the collaborative culture.

  • Bonus
  • Pension
  • Flexible benefits
  • 34 days holiday
  • Training allowance
  • Opportunities for career development
  • Flexible working
Apply now