Director, Global Credit Risk & FX Oversight

Airwallex; Greater London; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex in London seeks a Director of Credit Risk to lead the global second-line oversight of credit, FX, and counterparty risk. You will set risk guardrails that enable safe growth across merchant acquiring, charge cards, FX, treasury, and banking-partner activities, reporting to the Senior Director of Financial Risk.

This role requires guiding governance, managing limits and frameworks, and providing independent challenge to first-line decisions across multiple products and regions.

Qualifications

• 10–15 years of progressively senior experience across credit risk, counterparty risk, FX risk, treasury risk, or related financial risk disciplines within banking, payments, fintech, or another highly regulated financial services environment.
• Deep experience designing, implementing, and governing second-line credit risk frameworks in a complex, multi-jurisdictional organization.
• Strong understanding of credit risk identification, measurement, underwriting, limit management, monitoring, mitigation, provisioning, loss recognition, and capital implications.
• Demonstrated experience managing risk across multiple product lines, such as merchant acquiring, commercial or charge cards, B2B lending, payment processing, FX, treasury, settlement, or banking-partner activities.
• Practical experience overseeing FX and counterparty risk, including exposure measurement, concentration risk, limits, settlement risk, prefunding, collateral or other mitigants, and escalation governance.
• Proven ability to challenge first-line decisions and communicate clear risk positions to senior executives, commercial leaders, product and operations teams, banking partners, auditors, and regulators.

Responsibilities

• Credit risk framework and risk appetite: Define, implement, and continuously enhance the global second-line credit risk framework, including policies, risk appetite thresholds, limits, escalation protocols, and governance standards across Airwallex’s products and legal entities.
• Credit portfolio oversight: Oversee credit exposures across merchant acquiring, charge cards, B2B and commercial activities, FX pre-funding, treasury-related exposures, settlement flows, and other relevant products.
• Underwriting and limit governance: Review and challenge first-line underwriting strategies, customer and merchant risk policies, credit assessments, limit-setting methodologies, and exception processes. Act as a senior escalation point for complex or high-value credit decisions.
• FX risk oversight: Establish and monitor appropriate second-line guardrails for FX exposures arising from pre-funding, settlement, customer activity, treasury flows, and other multi-currency activities. Challenge controls, limits, escalation triggers, and risk reporting to ensure exposures remain within approved tolerances.
• Counterparty risk management: Set and oversee counterparty risk standards for banking partners, payment partners, merchants, customers, and other material counterparties. Establish appropriate exposure limits, concentration thresholds, monitoring requirements, and escalation processes.
• Portfolio monitoring and early warning indicators: Lead proactive monitoring of credit, FX, and counterparty portfolios, including exposure, concentration, delinquency, default, chargeback, loss, settlement, liquidity-of-counterparty, and other relevant risk indicators. Identify emerging trends and elevate material issues before they become systemic.
• Loss mitigation and remediation: Review and challenge first-line monitoring, collections, collateral, prefunding, reserves, chargeback, and other mitigation strategies. Ensure deteriorating counterparties, customers, merchants, or exposures are identified and addressed promptly.
• New products and market expansion: Partner with Product, Engineering, Commercial, Treasury, Finance, and Operations to assess and challenge the risk design of new products, features, markets, currencies, and partner arrangements before launch.
• Risk approvals and governance: Lead or support risk committee decisions, material risk approvals, limit exceptions, breach assessments, and remediation plans. Ensure decisions are documented clearly and aligned with approved risk appetite.
• Regulatory and partner engagement: Represent Credit Risk during regulatory examinations, internal and external audits, and reviews with banking and strategic partners. Prepare clear, decision-useful materials for senior management, risk committees, and the Board where appropriate.

Skills

Credit risk

Counterparty risk

FX risk

Treasury risk

Risk governance

Regulatory risk

Leadership

Education

MBA/Master's in Finance or related field

FRM / CFA / PRM

Tools

SQL

Python

Portfolio analytics

Job description

Airwallex in London seeks a Director of Credit Risk to lead the global second-line oversight of credit, FX, and counterparty risk. You will set risk guardrails that enable safe growth across merchant acquiring, charge cards, FX, treasury, and banking-partner activities, reporting to the Senior Director of Financial Risk.

This role requires guiding governance, managing limits and frameworks, and providing independent challenge to first-line decisions across multiple products and regions.