Financial Crime Manager

Our client is a technology company solving payments problems for businesses. Their mission is to help businesses in Africa become profitable envied and loved. They provide a suite of products to help businesses accept payments online and offline manage their operations and grow their business. Our client is driven by a commitment to excellence innovation and customer satisfaction.

Role Overview

As the Financial Crime Manager you will lead our clients fraud and AML detection operations from end-to-end. You will partner with product and engineering to evolve system capabilities while leading a high-performing team of specialists to deliver high-quality risk outcomes. By combining deep domain expertise with operational leadership you will ensure our client remains a safe and trusted payments platform.

You will be accountable for:

• Informing the product roadmap for our monitoring alerting and case management tools.
• The quality and effectiveness of fraud and AML monitoring logic and detection scenarios.
• The operating model and performance of the Financial Crime Monitoring teams.
• Translating risk regulatory and business requirements into robust scalable detection systems
• Driving operational excellence by using data and metrics to manage team capacity and performance.

Job Type: Full Time/Permanent

Location: Nairobi Kenya

Requirements

• 7 years in financial crime roles in payments fintech banking or financial services.
• Proven experience designing building and tuning risk detection systems (fraud AML or similar).
• Experience measuring and optimising detection performance using quantitative metrics.
• Strong systems thinking: able to design scalable maintainable monitoring frameworks rather than one-off rules.
• Deep understanding of financial crime typologies fraud patterns AML/CTF requirements and regulatory obligations.
• Experience operating within fraud AML risk or compliance functions in payments fintech or financial services.
• Proven experience leading and developing teams including setting direction coaching and performance management.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• High ownership mindset and comfort operating in ambiguous high-growth environments.

Preferred

• Familiarity with monitoring platforms alerting systems transaction screening and case management tools.
• Industry certifications such as ACAMS ICA CFE CFCS or similar.

Responsibilities

Financial Crime Oversight

• Own the end-to-end fraud and AML detection domain ensuring alignment between prevention detection investigation and remediation.
• Apply deep understanding of fraud typologies AML/CTF risks sanctions and regulatory expectations to detection design.
• Manage the Fraud and AML operational teams (specialists and first-line managers) to ensure adequate coverage capability and day-to-day execution.
• Translate regulatory partner and audit requirements into scalable technical and operational controls.
• Stay ahead of evolving financial crime patterns market-specific risks and regulatory developments across our clients footprint.

Financial Crime Capabilities

• Design and optimise systems logic scenarios and thresholds used to identify financial crime.
• Ensure adequate coverage and capability across the team to meet growing transaction volumes.
• Apply a deep understanding of fraud typologies AML/CTF risks and sanctions to the design of our controls.
• Establish feedback loops between investigation outcomes and detection strategies to improve signal quality.
• Maintain auditable documentation of detection logic business assumptions and strategy changes.
• Measure and manage detection performance using quantitative metrics (precision recall false positives alert-to-case conversion loss metrics).

Team Leadership & Development

• Manage and mentor the Fraud and AML operational teams including specialists and first-line managers.
• Set clear direction provide coaching and oversee performance management to ensure high-quality execution.

Operational Excellence

• Build and improve SLAs KPIs and quality frameworks across all Financial Crime teams.
• Use performance metrics to manage team capacity and ensure efficient investigation outcomes.
• Balance speed quality and regulatory expectations with a focus on maintaining a positive customer experience.

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product and Engineering teams to define requirements for monitoring alerting and case management tools.
• Work closely with Legal Compliance and Risk to ensure alignment with regulatory obligations.
• Collaborate with Data team to optimise rule effectiveness and performance
• Support audits partner reviews and regulatory engagements as a subject matter expert.
• Provide clear updates to senior stakeholders on operational performance risks and emerging issues