Head of Legal and Compliance London Operations

Crezco Limited

We are a technology-driven payments company with a mission to make money easy. We aim to reduce trade friction, improve the user experience, and speed up economic progress everywhere. By leveraging open banking, Crezco embeds domestic and international account-to-account (A2A) payments into B2B platforms, such as Xero’s UK Bill Payment solution. We do not believe businesses want to love their bank; they want the job done (JTBD). We are at the start of an exciting journey having established both product-market-fit and a go-to-market strategy, but there is 100x more to do. We are ambitious, and we will keep growing.

About the role:

Crezco is a venture capital-backed regulated payments company. The candidate will be the sole lead of Crezco’s legal and compliance requirements. The candidate will need to create, implement and manage legal and compliance policies and procedures. From a compliance perspective, a key outcome will be to successfully lead Crezco’s further regulatory license applications and compliance audits. We believe both legal and compliance functions can be business enablers. We build user-centric products, and we should adopt the same user-centric care with our compliance and legal requirements, whether the intended audience are our colleagues, customers, shareholders, financial services partners, or the regulator. Documents and procedures adopted can be simple and accurate without complexity. This is a ‘leadership’ role and you will work very closely with the CEO and other senior leaders at Crezco.

The type of work we expect

1. EMI license application: Crezco is presently regulated as an API, but a key outcome will be successfully managing Crezco’s EMI license application with the UK FCA.
2. Legal & compliance policies and procedures: ensuring Crezco adopts and/or implements the correct legal/compliance policies and procedures that include, but are not limited to, the following: AML policies, data protection rules, privacy policies, employment contracts, various terms & conditions, engagement letters, customer agreements, shareholder agreements, and articles.
3. Regulatory reporting and requirements: leading Crezco’s second line of defense to ensure compliance with applicable laws and standards while actively engaging with the FCA as a key stakeholder in Crezco’s future.
4. Third-party banking partner engagement: Crezco partners with various third-party financial institutions; the role will require actively engaging with existing partners and potential new partners to ensure our products and services are recognized for their compliance excellence.

What you will need to be successful:

1. Track record of building and establishing efficient processes and procedures.
2. 5+ PQE years working at a regulatory payments/fintech scale-up with strong existing knowledge of financial crime risk management, know-your-customer/business (KYC/B) checks, transaction monitoring, and sanctions screening.
3. Excellent academic and law firm credentials.

Supportive requirements:

1. Experience working with product and engineering teams.
2. Direct experience working with regulators on license applications.
3. Senior management and leadership experience.

Skill requirements:

1. Excellent project management skills.
2. Strong communication skills (written and verbal).
3. Positive, friendly, and optimistic.
4. Wants to work in a start-up.
5. A smart creative (know-how + creativity).
6. Ambitious/hardworking.
7. Celebrates team successes.
8. Values great user experiences.

Crezco’s values are customer centricity, collaboration, innovation, outcome-driven, and human. These are not just ‘words’, but were selected by all Crezconauts. We are also ambitious, hard-working, excellent communicators, take ownership and accountability seriously, and we want to build something special together. This is our journey; it will not be easy, but it will be rewarding.

Benefits:

1. Equity options.
2. Access to company pension and health insurance plans.
3. Flexible working: work from home or our London office.
4. Company retreats and strategic off-sites.

Interview Process:

1. Initial call with CEO (25 mins). Our CEO asks a fixed list of questions to every candidate.
2. A technical/role-based interview with the CEO, Head of Customer Operations, and/or Chief of Staff. You will be sent some questions ahead of the interview to help you prepare your answers (50 mins).
3. Crezco value alignment call with a Crezconaut (20 mins).
4. Minimum two professional reference requests (CEO would like to speak with two prior managers).