Financial Crime QA Manager

Our client is one of only six UK clearing banks with direct access to the country's payment systems. Built on modern, cloud-native technology, we provide businesses with secure, API-driven banking that's fast, compliant, and built for growth. Our role is simple: help ambitious businesses turn their plans into reality by removing barriers and simplifying complexity. If you want to work where technology meets banking, where security comes first, and where your work directly enables business ambition, you're in the right place.

Join Bank of London as Financial Crime Quality Assurance Manager and 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.

You will act as a critical feedback loop, using quality assurance insights to drive continuous improvement in policy implementation, training, and operational control execution. Your contribution will be instrumental in streamlining decision-making, reinforcing accountability, and ensuring the Bank operates with clarity, rigour, and efficiency across its financial crime processes.

You will be an experienced financial crime professional with a strong track record of assessing and assuring control effectiveness within a regulated financial services environment. You bring a deep understanding of financial crime frameworks — including KYC, CDD, Transaction Monitoring, and Screening — and know how to translate regulatory expectations into practical, risk-based assurance activity.

You’ll thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment and be confident working across a diverse stakeholder group spanning operations, compliance, and product. You’re skilled at identifying knowledge gaps, procedural inconsistencies, and control weaknesses — and using this insight to influence the continuous uplift of standards, training, and documentation.

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.

Benefits

·               Competitive salary package

·               25 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays

·               Holiday allowance that increases with length of service

·               Enhanced company pension offering (up to 20% salary sacrifice)

·               Competitive sick pay

·               Life Assurance - 4x annual salary

·               Private Medical Insurance with comprehensive cover for you and your family

·               24/7 GP service and private prescription ordering

·               Virtual physiotherapy for muscles, bones and joint care

·               Digital counselling and virtual mental health support

·               24/7 confidential Employee Assistance Programme

·               Digital gym and guided meditation classes

·               Discounted gym memberships

·               Annual eye care test and contribution towards glasses

·               Market leading parental leave

·               Neonatal support

·               Partner support for antenatal appointments

·               KIT days and structured support when returning to work

·               Flexible working (subject to agreement)

·               Fresh daily fruit and snacks

·               Bi-weekly office breakfasts

·               Peer-to-peer recognition programme with monthly value awards

·               Clear goals and performance development framework