Compliance Lead

About Allica Bank

Allica is the UK’s fastest growing company - and the fastest-growing financial technology (Fintech) firm ever. Our purpose is to help established SMEs, one of the last major underserved opportunities in Fintech.

Established SMEs are the backbone of local communities - representing over a third of our economy - yet have been largely neglected both by traditional high street banks and modern fintech providers.

Role Description

This is a rare opportunity to own and shape the compliance and financial crime framework for an innovative suite of invoice finance, BNPL and embedded credit products operating within a regulated UK banking group.

As Compliance Lead and MLRO for Kriya, you will be responsible for implementing and embedding the bank’s enterprise-wide compliance and financial crime policies into a proportionate, product-specific framework, ensuring full alignment with the bank’s risk appetite while meeting the unique operational and customer risks of embedded finance and invoice financing.

You will not be creating compliance in isolation. Instead, you will act as the translator and integrator between group-level bank policy and a fast-scaling product environment ensuring regulatory consistency, auditability, and control, while enabling commercial growth.

Reporting to Kriya’s Head of Risk with a functional reporting line into the bank’s central Compliance function, you will act as the MLRO for Kriya, an Annex 1 business registered with the FCA for AML supervision (but not otherwise FCA-authorised).

Principal Accountabilities

Policy Integration & Framework Ownership

• Own the end-to-end Compliance and Financial Crime Framework for Kriya’s digital lending products, including Embedded PayLater and Invoice Finance.

• Implement, adapt and operationalise the Bank’s group compliance, AML, sanctions and financial crime policies, ensuring they are applied consistently and proportionately within the product suite.

• Identify where product-specific controls, procedures or interpretations are required and manage these in line with bank governance and approval processes.

MLRO & Financial Crime Oversight

• Act as MLRO for Kriya, with responsibility for AML/CTF compliance under the MLRs, including oversight of SAR decision-making, escalation and reporting.

• Ensure customer due diligence (CDD/KYC), sanctions screening, PEP identification and transaction monitoring are fully aligned to bank standards, risk appetite statements and escalation thresholds.

• Maintain strong oversight of outsourced or technology-enabled financial crime controls where applicable.

Business Partnership & Product Enablement

• Serve as the primary compliance and financial crime advisor to the product, engineering and commercial teams.

• Provide clear, pragmatic guidance on how bank policies apply to new products, features, customer segments and distribution models.

• Support product launches and change initiatives through compliance risk assessments, approvals and documented sign-off.

Governance, Monitoring & Assurance

• Own product-level compliance risk assessments, control mapping and issue management, ensuring consistency with group risk frameworks.

• Run the compliance monitoring programme for the product suite, ensuring findings are tracked, remediated and reported in line with bank standards.

• Ensure all compliance documentation, MI and controls are audit-ready and defensible to internal audit, external audit and regulators.

Stakeholder & Regulatory Engagement

• Act as a key interface between Kriya and the bank’s central Compliance, Risk and Financial Crime teams.

• Manage regulatory interactions relevant to AML supervision, including FCA correspondence, audits or thematic reviews, in coordination with the bank.

• Contribute to group-wide financial crime and compliance initiatives where product expertise is required.

Culture & Capability

• Embed a strong compliance and financial crime culture within the product division through training, guidance and proactive engagement.

• Build scalable compliance processes that grow with the business while remaining firmly anchored to bank policy.

Personal Attributes & Experience

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in a compliance role within Fintech or digital lending

• Prior experience within Invoice Finance

• Proven experience in building or significantly enhancing compliance frameworks for specific products, not just maintaining group-wide policies

• Deep, practical knowledge of the UK regulatory landscape

• Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate regulatory text into actionable business requirements for tech and product teams

• A confident and influential communicator, able to engage and advise stakeholders at all levels, from engineers to the board

• High integrity, strong organisational skills, and an unwavering attention to detail

Working at Allica Bank

At Allica Bank we want to ensure our employees have the right tools and environment in which to succeed in their role and in support of our customers.

Our employees are at the heart of everything we do, so our benefits are designed with you in mind:

• Full onboarding support and continued development opportunities

• Options for flexible working

• Regular social activities

• Pension contributions

• Discretionary bonus scheme

• Private health cover

• Life assurance

• Family friendly policies including enhanced Maternity & Paternity leave

Don’t tick every box?

Don’t worry if you don’t have all the skills or requirements listed on the job description. If you think you’ll be a good fit, we’d still love to hear from you!

Flexible working

We know the ‘9-to-5’ isn’t right for everyone. That’s why Allica Bank is fully committed to flexible and hybrid working. Please let us know what is best for you and, if we can, we will do our best to accommodate.

Diversity

We’re a diverse bunch here at Allica, with all kinds of experiences, backgrounds and lifestyles. Our openness and differences make us stronger, and we want everybody to feel comfortable bringing as much of themselves to work with them as they like.