Onboarding Process Lead

HSBC Holdings plc; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

HSBC Holdings plc in International Wealth and Premier Banking seeks an Onboarding Process Lead to define globally consistent onboarding requirements across markets, translating policy and regulatory demands into clear, automated journeys that balance risk and customer experience.

You will simplify and standardise processes across markets, govern ownership and changes, and collaborate with Compliance, Legal, Tax and Technology to deliver safer, faster onboarding while supporting local deviations

Qualifications

• Significant experience in onboarding operations or policy/risk within banking or financial services.
• Ability to translate policy and regulatory requirements into actionable business rules and procedures.
• Experience simplifying and standardising processes across multiple markets.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain global onboarding requirements across markets.
• Map policy requirements to journey steps and convert into testable business rules.
• Oversee simplification and standardisation of onboarding processes while distinguishing genuine regulatory variation.
• Identify duplicated or conflicting requirements and build evidence-based cases for change.
• Reduce referrals and manual reviews through clearer, risk-based journeys.
• Establish governance for justified local deviations from global requirements.
• Govern ownership, version control and change impact assessment for onboarding procedures across dimensions.
• Collaborate with teams across Compliance, Legal, Tax, Risk, Operations and Technology to align requirements.

Skills

Onboarding operations

Regulatory policy translation

Risk-based thinking

Stakeholder collaboration

Global governance

Job description

Within International Wealth and Premier Banking, we serve 41 million customers globally, including 6.7 million who are international, from retail customers to ultra-high net worth individuals and their families. We help our customers look after their day-to-day finances and manage, protect and grow their wealth. The International Wealth and Premier Banking Chief Operating Office supports the business to deliver exceptional customer journeys and increase efficiency across our global network. We support the business through effective governance, financial and risk management, transformation, and operational management, ensuring that all International Wealth and Premier Banking business units and markets have the right capabilities and procedures to compete effectively and grow safely. We work in an agile manner and at pace, partnering with teams in Technology and Digital Business Services to bring innovative, digital-first solutions to our customers.

The Role

As Onboarding Process Lead you’ll define and maintain globally consistent minimum onboarding requirements across IWPB, the UK and Hong Kong while making local regulatory variation transparent and well governed. The role translates policy and regulatory requirements into clear, executable and increasingly automated customer and colleague journeys that improve outcomes while maintaining effective controls. You’ll simplify and standardise onboarding processes and procedures across markets reducing avoidable referrals, late-stage failures, manual reviews and repeated customer requests. You’ll establish ownership, version control and governance for onboarding procedures and assess changes for customer, operational, technology and control impacts. Success means clearer risk-based journeys, stronger alignment across policy, operations and technology and a controlled approach to justified local deviations.

What you’ll be doing

• Define and maintain global minimum policy and operational requirements for retail onboarding across markets
• Map policy and regulatory requirements to journey steps and convert them into clear, testable business rules and operational instructions
• Oversee simplification and standardisation of onboarding processes and procedures while distinguishing genuine regulatory variation from historic practice
• Identify duplicated, conflicting, unclear or unnecessarily restrictive requirements and build evidence-based cases for change
• Reduce avoidable referrals, late-stage failures, manual reviews and repeated customer requests through clearer and more risk-based journeys
• Establish a transparent process to assess, approve, record and govern justified local deviations from global requirements
• Govern ownership, version control and change impact assessment for onboarding procedures across customer, operational, technology and control dimensions
• Partner with Financial Crime, Fraud, Compliance, Legal, Tax, Business Risk, operations and technology teams to align requirements and implementation
• Support formal approvals by first-line and second-line control functions and contribute to assurance, audit and remediation activity

What we’re looking for

• Bring significant experience in onboarding operations, customer lifecycle management, policy or business risk within banking or financial services
• Demonstrate strong knowledge of know-your-customer requirements including customer due diligence, screening, fraud, identity verification and tax-related onboarding requirements
• Show proven capability in process simplification and standardisation across multiple markets or operating models
• Evidence experience translating policy and regulatory requirements into clear operational procedures, business rules and technology requirements
• Demonstrate experience distinguishing global minimum requirements from local regulatory variations including managing formal deviations
• Show experience working effectively with first-line and second-line control functions in a controlled change environment
• Bring a strong track record of disciplined document governance including ownership, version control and adherence management
• Communicate clearly in writing and in stakeholder forums including securing agreement and resolving competing interpretations or priorities
• Demonstrate ability to support dynamic questions, risk-based journeys and automation of operational requirements

Global onboarding requirements governance

This role sits at the point where policy meets operational reality. You’ll turn complex regulatory and control expectations into onboarding journeys that colleagues can execute and customers can complete with fewer loops and less friction. You’ll create clarity on what is globally required, what is locally justified and how decisions are governed over time. If you want to shape consistent onboarding standards across key markets while improving customer outcomes and control effectiveness we’d like to hear from you.