Deputy CRO Wise Europe

Deputy Chief Risk Officer, EU Region

Wise is a global technology company dedicated to simplifying international payments.

Responsibilities

• Enhance and implement a global risk management framework tailored to the EU region, in alignment with Wise’s global risk management strategy.
• Provide advice to product teams to guide them effectively resolving issues and developing new features.
• Develop or enhance relevant frameworks, policies, and procedures required to support risk management across the relevant licences, ensuring that these are appropriate for the licence and applied in practice.
• Develop a deep understanding of products as well as group and regional controls, supporting the first line in the development of relevant control assurance metrics as well as ensuring adequate and proportionate outsourcing oversight frameworks and assurance are in place for regional entities.
• Present monitoring outcomes and updates to relevant committees on both Wise EU and group level, including executive management, the regulator, and the Board, as appropriate.
• Lead, coach, and develop the Europe team, to ensure they have deep product and domain knowledge and can effectively challenge and advise the first line to improve risk identification, assessment, and monitoring across products and entities.
• Lead risk assessments and stress tests to identify and evaluate risks specific to the EU markets including operational, tech, compliance, financial, financial crime, and strategic risks, and provide a detailed understanding of risk posture and remediation work necessary to mitigate the risks to key stakeholders.
• Be seen as a trusted risk advisor ensuring relevant risks are well understood and managed through product planning, new product and market launch risk assessments, issues management, setting of risk appetites, and KRIs.
• Provide regular updates on incidents, issues, product risks, and internal and external risk changes with the management team of the entities and provide timely escalations to the group where necessary.
• Streamline and consolidate risk visibility across three lines of defence and provide risk-based prioritisation to the three lines including on remediations, audits, and testing.
• Oversee the implementation of risk management tools and systems in the region, leveraging technology and data analytics from the group risk teams to enhance risk monitoring, reporting, and decision-making processes.
• Develop and maintain effective relationships with regional regulators, industry peers, and other external stakeholders to stay abreast of regulatory developments, industry trends, and best practices in risk management.

Opportunities

• Steer the growth and professional capabilities of the Risk team across Europe.
• Embed risk management directly into the business, ensuring risk-reward decisioning is central to our fast-moving innovation.
• Be fully empowered to identify risk challenges, drive root cause analysis, and lead the solution design and implementation end-to-end.

Qualifications

• 7‑12 years of experience in risk management for EU and/or UK financial services institutions.
• Strong knowledge of Belgian and/or European risk management frameworks and/or industry best practice.
• Subject matter expertise in EU regulation such as DORA, outsourcing and third party risk management, safeguarding and data privacy.
• Experience implementing enterprise risk management programs for financial services institutions.
• Experience aligning to the other key risks across the risk taxonomy, including operational, financial and strategic risk as well as intersecting risks.
• A strong understanding of systems, management information, and reporting systems.
• A demonstrated track record of second line of defence independence and challenge/ escalation where concerns are felt.
• An ability to work independently and flexibly within a fast-moving environment.