Team Leader - Customer Due Diligence and Onboarding

Client of 6 Pence

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Drive customer-centric initiatives by balancing regulatory compliance with an enhanced customer experience, ensuring the due diligence processes are efficient, transparent and aligned with the bank s customer service standards to ensure a seamless customer journey at the time of onboarding, maintenance and CDD refreshers.
• Manages and reviews Standard Customer Due Diligence (SDD) and Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (EDD) on current, new and/or potential customers within the company and FIs for other branches. SDD is applicable for low/medium risk customers while EDD for high-risk, very-high-risk and prohibited clients. Ensure adequate oversight on all (Request for Information) RFIs and requests routed from compliance with actioning the results and outcome shared by the risk stewards. Furthermore, ensure thorough and cohesive responses to all relevant Financial Institutions (FIs) on the reverse KYC requests as well as any RFI raised through liaising with relevant internal and external stakeholders and ensuring comprehensive responses are sent without breach of due dates.
• Ensure that relevant customer information and documentation is collected to develop an understanding of normal and expected activity based on the customer business operations.
• Monitors, research, analyses, and addresses all essential compliance activities including but not limited to drilling down on beneficial ownership for higher risk, very high risk, prohibited clients, identifying politically exposed (PEP) individuals, negative media, and sanctions issues.
• Solve problems and investigate/resolve a wide variety of issues and requests that include gathering additional information, setting expectations, and working with other departments / stakeholders to fulfil customer requests.
• Assisting and reviewing RFIs requests to provide any additional information is required, additional information and required documents to be obtained from the customers and execute the request within Turn Around Time (TAT).
• Ensure that the Customer Risk Assessment Methodology (CRAM) is in place for all newly onboarded and existing customers, and that the accurate/latest risk assessment is consistently reflected at the core level.
• Oversee and execute projects and system upgrades, guaranteeing on-time completion, adherence to regulations, precise documentation, and efficient teamwork with necessary departments as needed.
• Respond and remediate issues identified by the Quality Assurance or audit teams.
• Oversee and execute projects and system upgrades, guaranteeing on-time completion, adherence to regulations, precise documentation, and efficient teamwork with necessary departments as needed.
• Assist Business Unit to draft/conduct a gap analysis and review of Bank s policies and procedures from Financial Crime perspective to ensure adherence with regulatory requirements.
• When applicable, for high-risk and very high-risk, prohibited clients support in the risk assessment and analysis of account activity and ensure compliance approval is sought for all periodic reviews, onboarding and trigger-based reviews.
• Proactive outreach to customers that fail KYC to encourage/assist them with the completion of the renewal process.
• Manages unsatisfied customers and non-cooperative customers, which may occur when raising KYC questions, in a professional manner.
• Monitor customer transactions and activities for any suspicious patterns or red flags that may indicate money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, or other illicit activities when conducting the KYC at the stage of onboarding customers and the time of periodic review for Existing to Bank relationships. Promptly report any suspicious activities to the bank's designated team through raising unusual activity reports (UAR). Escalate all necessary issues to management in a timely fashion in a proper and structural manner without tipping-off.
• Maintain strong good working relationship with the Customer Service Executive, Relationship Mangers, and other intra-department (i.e. within Corporate, Commercial and Financial Institutions) stakeholders.
• Operates in full compliance with internal policies and procedures as well as applicable regulations and laws, including Financial Crime Module of the CBB rulebook.
• Manage the reverse KYC for all correspondent banking relationship in a timely manner and engage risk stewards to conclude the process.
• Manage any other responsibilities assigned from time to time by line manager as well as act as backup whenever needed.
• Conduct frequent reconciliations, including but not limited to newly onboarded relationships, ongoing updates, and other assigned tasks within the team.
• Lead and manage the assigned Customer due diligence analyst teams. This includes but is not limited to monitoring of attendance, managing performance, KPI management as well as leave management.
• Review incoming KYC form from assigned team members for proper documentation and accuracy. Provide quality assurance of the assigned team members customer risk profiles.
• Provide advisory and training to team members and all stakeholders on KYC matters, including but not limited to onboarding, trigger scenarios, ongoing updates, and all related tasks assigned to the team.
• Ensure department standards are being adhered to while identifying opportunities for improvement and integration with the review process. Support the establishment of best practice across the group.
• Coordinates directly with other areas of the bank clients to obtain relevant KYC requirements (i.e. Compliance, Legal, Relationship Managers, Customer Service Executives, Operations).
• Promptly responds to queries and assists with problem-solving any issues brought to their attention from internal or external stakeholders
• Review and update Business Unit trackers, including but not limited to screening, Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, requests for information (RFIs), dormant accounts, and exit recommendations. Coordinate with relevant stakeholders as needed to maintain records and updates for audit trails and submissions to required forums, such as the Group Compliance Management Committee (GCMC).
• Identify and report uncooperative customers to the line manager to decision the applicable consequence measure.