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Allica Bank, the UK's fastest-growing fintech firm, is seeking a Senior Compliance Manager to lead a new second line of defense (2LOD) assurance capability. This role reports to the Chief Compliance Officer and is responsible for designing, building, and delivering a comprehensive assurance programme across financial crime, conduct, compliance, and operational risk.
Key responsibilities include:
- Lead the design and delivery of Allica's 2LOD assurance programme, moving beyond duplicative first-line control re-testing toward risk-based, process-led, and outcome-focused assurance.
- Develop and operate a data-driven compliance monitoring model using business, customer, operational, risk, and control data to identify emerging risks and inform assurance priorities.
- Provide independent assurance to the CCO, Executive Committee, and Board on whether key risks are properly identified, controlled, monitored, and remediated.
- Build and lead the assurance team, establishing clear standards for planning, scoping, testing, evidence collection, reporting, issue grading, and closure validation.
- Create and maintain the annual 2LOD Assurance Plan, ensuring risk-based coverage aligned to regulatory priorities, customer harm indicators, risk appetite, incidents, and material business changes.
- Develop assurance methodology and standards, including universe mapping, sampling frameworks, test matrices, evidence standards, and finding grading criteria.
- Design and deliver assurance reviews across all four risk domains, assessing risk identification, control design, operating effectiveness, management information reliability, and regulatory outcomes.
- Build a first-line quality assurance reliance model, determining when 2LOD can rely on first-line testing versus when independent validation or testing is required.
- Leverage data analytics and AI-enabled techniques (with appropriate governance) to enhance risk identification, sampling, exception analysis, and reporting.
- Produce concise, evidence-based assurance reports for governance forums, highlighting key findings, emerging risks, systemic issues, and remediation quality.
- Track findings through closure, validating that management actions address root causes and escalating overdue or ineffective remediation.
- Challenge senior stakeholders constructively on weak risk assessments, poor control design, insufficient evidence, and inadequate remediation.
- Coordinate assurance coverage with first-line and internal audit functions to eliminate duplication and maintain 2LOD independence.
Required experience and attributes:
- Proven track record leading or materially contributing to 2LOD assurance, compliance monitoring, financial crime assurance, operational risk assurance, or internal audit in a regulated financial services environment, ideally UK business banking.
- Deep understanding of the distinctions between first-line QA, second-line assurance, and third-line internal audit, with judgment to build proportionate assurance models.
- Strong knowledge of UK banking regulatory expectations across conduct, compliance, financial crime, and operational risk.
- Comfort using analytics and AI-enabled tools safely and pragmatically, with attention to data quality, governance, explainability, and human judgment.
- Strong data literacy: ability to use management information, population analysis, exception reporting, trend analysis, and targeted sampling to form and evidence assurance conclusions.
- Ability to define control and outcome standards, assess design and operating effectiveness, identify root causes, and write clear findings linked to regulatory risk and customer harm.
- Confident leader capable of building a new team, setting quality standards, coaching reviewers, and establishing disciplined delivery rhythms.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly for CCO and committee-level reporting.
- Ability to challenge senior stakeholders with evidence-based rigor while remaining practical and independent.
