Financial Crime Specialist - KYC

Financial Crime Specialist - KYCManchesterFraud & Financial Crime – Financial Crime Ops /Employee - Permanent /Hybridapply for this jobOur Story Hello there. We’re Zopa. We started our journey back in 2005, building the first ever peer-to-peer lending company. Fast forward to 2020 and we launched Zopa Bank. A bank that listens to what our customers don’t like about finance and does the opposite. We’re redefining what it feels like to work in finance. Our vision for a new era of banking puts people front and centre — we’ve built a business that empowers everyone to aim high, every day, to move finance forward. Find out more about our fantastic offerings at Zopa.com!  We’re incredibly proud of our achievements and none of it would be possible without the amazing team here. It’s not just industry awards we’re winning, we’ve also been named in the top three UK’s Most Loved Workplaces.  If you embrace unconventional challenges, are unafraid to think differently and are driven to make an outsized impact, you’ll thrive here at Zopa, so join us, and make it count. Want to see us in action? Follow us on Instagram @zopalife We are looking for a driven and detail-oriented KYC Financial Crime Specialist to join our fast-paced Financial Crime Operations team. This is a hands-on role at the heart of our fincrime function, where you will be responsible for protecting the bank from financial crime by conducting Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), assessing transaction activity, and ensuring our onboarding and ongoing customer checks are completed.  The successful candidate will be comfortable managing a varied caseload at pace, making sound risk-based decisions, and leveraging AI-powered tools to work efficiently without compromising quality or compliance.   This is a hybrid role – the team works in the office 3 days a week.  Your working week will consist of 7.5 hour shifts between 8 am and 8 pm, Monday to Friday, and you will be required to work one day of the weekend every other week, remotely. If you work a day at the weekend, you will receive a day off during the week.   The role also requires several bank holidays to be worked a year, with any bank holidays worked given back as time in lieu.  A day in the life: Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD): Conduct thorough, risk-proportionate investigations on customers including medium and high-risk customers, ensuring all critical due diligence information is obtained and documented to the required standard.  Assess customers’ Source of Wealth (SoW) and Source of Funds (SoF), evaluating whether declared wealth and funds are consistent with their overall risk profile and transactional behaviour.  Complete EDD reviews for Specially Interested Persons (SIPs), Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs), and customers subject to court orders or law enforcement enquiries.  Customer Risk Assessment & Ongoing Monitoring: Manage a caseload of ongoing and onboarding customer risk review cases efficiently, maintaining high throughput without sacrificing investigative quality.  Identify and escalate customers whose risk profile has materially changed, applying sound regulatory and commercial judgement.  Adapt quickly to changing volumes and prioritisation needs, demonstrating resilience and flexibility in a fast-moving operational environment.  PEP & Sanctions Screening: Conduct onboarding and ongoing name screening checks to accurately identify sanctioned individuals, PEPs, and Relatives and Close Associates (RCAs).  Assess screening alerts with confidence and precision, escalating appropriately and completing EDD off the back of positive findings in line with policy and regulatory requirements.  Maintain a strong understanding of sanctions regimes, including OFSI, OFAC, and UN designations, and their implications for customer relationships.  Payment Screening: Conduct ad hoc screening on international inbound credits to ensure funds have not originated from a sanctioned entity or...