Financial Crime Business Executive Sanctions Lead - Vice President

Join our dynamic Commercial and Investment Bank (CIB) Financial Crime Global Governance, Policy and Transformation Team as a Vice President based in London/Bournemouth and make a real impact on the firm’s growth and resilience.

As a Vice President within the Financial Crime Global Governance, you will operate with significant autonomy, leading end-to-end problem solving and execution, coordinating cross-functional stakeholders (Operations, Controls, Product, Technology, Data Science), and producing regulator and audit-ready artefacts that evidence “what good looks like” in an intelligence-led financial crime control environment. You will be supporting the Executive Director (ED) leading Financial Crime Governance within the CIB Financial Crime Global Governance, Policy and Transformation team. You will be a senior delivery and subject matter lead responsible for driving defined workstreams across governance, policy/standards, cross-border payments risk, and technology-enabled transformation (AI/ML, advanced analytics, and automation) spanning AML, sanctions, fraud, and KYC/CDD.

Job responsibilities

• Review and support the redefinition of the CIB sanctions framework ensuring compliance with all applicable sanctions regulations and maintaining robust processes for alert resolution and investigations.

• Ensure clear, actionable sanctions guidance is documented, kept up to date, and maintained.

• Support annual risk assessments to identify and help mitigate institutional vulnerabilities.

• Oversee sanctions list management, including ingestion, testing, and implementation of regulatory sanctions lists into screening engines.

• Partner with Data and IT teams to configure, test, and tune screening rules to minimize false positives while maintaining required regulatory coverage.

• Cultivate and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, including internal business leaders and colleagues in Second Line of Defense (2LOD) Compliance, Risk, and Legal teams across multiple countries; serve as a sanctions subject matter expert (SME).

• Support business initiatives within specific sanctions disciplines (e.g., policy, governance, screening, investigations).

• Help shape operational and/or functional execution by acting as a trusted SME and advisor.

• Oversee the design and implementation of sustainable process enhancements, ensuring appropriate controls and oversight are in place to mitigate risk.

Required qualifications, capabilities and skills

• Extensive experience in financial crime risk, controls, governance, or transformation within a regulated financial institution, payments business, FinTech, or relevant advisory role.

• Strong working knowledge of sanctions risk management and sanctions screening concepts (alert generation, tuning, investigative workflows) and broader exposure to AML, fraud, and KYC/CDD.

• Demonstrated experience delivering complex transformation initiatives end-to-end (control, process, data, and/or technology), with strong execution discipline.

• Ability to translate financial crime risk and control intent into implementable specifications (business requirements, control requirements, model governance requirements, acceptance criteria).

• Proven capability to lead current-state assessments (controls, data, systems, operating model) and develop target-state proposals with prioritized plans and decision points.

• Working literacy in analytics, AI/ML, and automation applied to financial crime, including performance metrics, monitoring approaches, and governance expectations.

• Strong MI skillset: defining KRIs/KPIs, designing dashboards/management reporting, and establishing measurable, explainable benefits tracking.

• Experience supporting audit/regulatory/assurance activities: evidence preparation, response drafting, remediation planning, and tracking to sustainable closure.

• Strong documentation and traceability discipline (typology/risk, control intent, design, testing, monitoring, outcomes), with auditability and explainability in mind.

• Executive communication skills: can produce concise, decision-ready committee materials with clear recommendations, options, and trade-offs.

• Stakeholder leadership without direct reports: able to run working groups, drive alignment across Ops/Controls/Tech/Product/Data Science, and escalate effectively.

Preferred qualifications, capabilities and skills

• Experience modernizing sanctions (or broader financial crime) governance frameworks, including committee packs, decision logs, governance calendars, and escalation triggers.

• Exposure to cross-border payments risk typologies, especially complex/high-risk corridors and sanctions-relevant payment flows.

• Familiarity with crypto/digital asset financial crime control concepts (e.g., wallet risk, on/off-ramp typologies, Travel Rule operating considerations where applicable).

• Exposure to FinTech partnership risk oversight and/or correspondent banking financial crime frameworks, including due diligence and corridor monitoring considerations.

• Awareness of relevant global standards and regulatory expectations (e.g., FATF, multi-regime sanctions considerations).

• Prior experience defining “minimum documentation sets” for analytics/model/automation deployments (data lineage, testing evidence, monitoring plans, control attestations).

• Demonstrated ability to identify opportunities for AI and automation integration within operational workflows, including experience evaluating, implementing, or governing AI-driven solutions to achieve scalable process improvements and strategic objectives.