Full job descriptionAs a Financial Crime Quality Assurance Manager you will take ownership of building and embedding a first-line assurance capability that uplifts the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of Financial Crime Operations across the Bank. You will lead the operational delivery of a risk-based QA programme, providing independent assessment of the Bank’s control performance across onboarding, transaction monitoring, and ongoing due diligence processes.
Key responsibilities
*Lead the design and execution of a first-line Quality Assurance (QA) framework across core financial crime processes including onboarding, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and ongoing due diligence.
*Conduct independent reviews of case handling and decision-making to assess control effectiveness, consistency, and alignment with internal policies and regulatory expectations.
*Deliver a tiered QA model — incorporating real-time reviews for high-risk clients and retrospective sampling for lower-risk activity — to drive timely feedback and reduce approval bottlenecks.
*Identify knowledge gaps, procedural weaknesses, and control design failures, and feed structured insights into operational teams, training functions, and policy updates.
*Partner with 1LOD teams (e.g. Client Onboarding, CDD, Screening, TM, Fraud Ops) and 2LOD Compliance to ensure QA findings support uplift of controls, training, and procedural guidance.
*Develop and maintain a centralised QA MI suite, enabling visibility of key trends, recurring issues, and control performance across teams and client segments.
*Act as a key contributor to audit and regulatory readiness by maintaining well-evidenced QA outputs and tracking remediation of findings.
*Drive continuous improvement in operational quality and assurance maturity, supporting a high-performance culture and robust financial crime governance.
*Support the assessment and enhancement of QA tooling, sampling methodologies, and feedback mechanisms to ensure the framework remains scalable and risk-aligned.
Key Requirements
*Proven experience in financial crime quality assurance/control within a regulated banking or financial services environment.
*Strong knowledge of UK AML/CTF, sanctions, and fraud regulations, and familiarity with regulatory expectations from the FCA, PRA, and JMLSG.
*Experience overseeing financial crime controls for high-risk client segments such as NBFIs, MSBs, FX brokers, and crypto firms.
*Deep understanding of clients’ financial crime control frameworks, including onboarding, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and MI reporting.
*Strong working knowledge of the three lines of defence model, with demonstrated effectiveness operating within the First Line of Defence (1LOD).
*Ability to develop and implement standardised frameworks for client oversight, including ongoing due diligence and MI collection.
*Proficiency with financial crime technology platforms (e.g. ComplyAdvantage, LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet) and experience using data to drive risk-based decisions.
*Demonstrated ability to lead through change, including tooling enhancements, control remediation, or framework improvements.
*Excellent communication and documentation skills, with a focus on analytical thinking, clarity of risk articulation, and senior stakeholder engagement.