Senior Manager, Financial Crimes Compliance

Vanguard Group; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial services firm is seeking a Senior Manager - Financial Crime Compliance to build and maintain the AFC Framework for Europe, ensuring compliance with regulatory expectations. This role involves strategic oversight, policy development, and cross-functional leadership to mitigate financial crime risks across jurisdictions. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in financial crime compliance, strong leadership skills, and exceptional communication abilities. The firm promotes a hybrid working model for enhanced flexibility and collaboration.

Benefits

Hybrid working model

Collaborative culture

Qualifications

• Extensive senior-level experience in Financial Crime Compliance, within a regulated financial services environment.
• Strong leadership skills with experience in high-impact decision-making.
• Deep understanding of risk and control frameworks relevant to Financial Crime.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the AFC Framework for Europe, ensuring it meets regulatory expectations.
• Lead the development and maintenance of AFC policies and standards.
• Act as a subject-matter expert for AML/CTF, Sanctions, and other financial crime risks.

Skills

Financial Crime Compliance experience

Leadership and judgment

Communication and influencing skills

Education

Professional qualifications (ICA, ACAMS)

Job description

Senior Manager - Financial Crime Compliance

We are seeking a highly capable and strategically minded Senior Manager - Financial Crime Compliance to play a pivotal role in safeguarding our European businesses against financial crime risks. This role sits within the Anti-Financial Crime function and carries significant responsibility for oversight, framework development, and cross-functional influence. You will own and maintain the AFC Framework for Europe, ensuring that the region operates to a consistently high standard across Policy, Governance, Risk Assessment, Testing and Monitoring. You will also act as a key deputy to the Head of Financial Crime, Europe & SMF17, stepping in where relevant to provide continuity of leadership and decision-making. This is an outstanding opportunity for an experienced AFC professional to shape the direction of the Financial Crime programme across multiple jurisdictions and business lines.

London
Reporting to: Head of Financial Crime, Europe & SMF17

About the Role

We are seeking a highly capable and strategically minded Senior Manager - Financial Crime Compliance to play a pivotal role in safeguarding our European businesses against financial crime risks. This role sits within the Anti-Financial Crime function and carries significant responsibility for oversight, framework development, and cross-functional influence.

Key Responsibilities

Ownership of the AFC Framework (Europe)

• Own, maintain and continually enhance the Europe Financial Crime Compliance Framework, ensuring it meets regulatory expectations and global standards.
• Lead the development, drafting and maintenance of AFC policies, standards, procedures and guidance, ensuring they are clear, actionable and aligned to regulatory change.
• Oversee and coordinate the region's Financial Crime Governance, including committee structures, reporting, escalation processes and decision documentation.
• Lead the Financial Crime Risk Assessment cycle for Europe, including the Business-Wide Risk Assessment (BWRA), thematic reviews and ongoing risk identification.
• Oversee AFC testing, monitoring and assurance activity, ensuring effective identification of risks, control gaps and opportunities for improvement.

Regulatory and Business Partnership

• Act as a subject-matter expert for AML/CTF, Sanctions, ABAC and Anti-Tax Evasion requirements across European entities.
• Support the interpretation and operationalisation of regulatory change, ensuring business teams receive clear, practical guidance.
• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders in 1LoD and 2LoD, promoting a risk-aware culture and ensuring effective execution of AFC obligations.

Deputising for the Head of Financial Crime, Europe & SMF17

• Represent AFC Europe in senior governance forums, working groups and regulatory interactions when required.
• Provide leadership continuity during absence of the Head of Financial Crime, Europe, including decision-making, briefing senior leaders, and guiding the AFC strategy.
• Champion AFC's strategic priorities across the business, maintaining alignment with global Financial Crime objectives.

Control Environment & Operational Excellence

• Provide oversight of key Financial Crime controls including screening, Transaction Monitoring, periodic reviews, KYC/CDD, suspicious activity reporting and customer risk rating.
• Partner with Operations and Technology to ensure policies and standards are embedded into practical, workable business processes.
• Drive continuous improvement of MI, dashboards, data quality, tooling and workflow efficiency.

Programme & Change Delivery

• Contribute to large-scale Financial Crime remediation and enhancement programmes across Europe.
• Manage interdependencies across regulatory change, systems upgrades, resource planning and BAU operations.
• Ensure robust documentation, tracking and governance of Financial Crime change initiatives.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Extensive senior-level experience in Financial Crime Compliance, within the second-line, in a regulated financial services environment.
• A proven track record of leading complex AFC activities across multiple risk domains (AML/CTF, Sanctions, Fraud, ABAC, Transaction Monitoring, KYC/CDD).
• Strategic policy development expertise, including drafting policies, standards and frameworks, and ensuring they are successfully operationalised across multiple business lines and jurisdictions.
• Strong leadership and judgment, with experience making high-impact decisions, advising executive committees, and shaping firm-wide Financial Crime risk appetite and strategy.
• Deep technical understanding of risk and control frameworks, including BWRA, RCSAs, thematic reviews, controls testing, assurance methodologies, and regulatory risk management.
• Experience engaging with regulators (e.g., FCA, CBI, other EU regulators) and representing AFC at senior governance forums.
• Exceptional communication and influencing skills, capable of advising senior executives, coaching business leaders, and translating complex regulatory expectations into actionable solutions.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional programmes, including multi-workstream remediation, framework enhancement and operational uplift across first and second line teams.
• Experience managing and developing high-performing teams, including senior specialists, SMEs and managers, with the ability to drive culture, capability and succession planning.

Desirable

• Experience operating across multiple European jurisdictions and/or global AFC structures.
• Recognised professional qualifications (ICA, ACAMS, Int. Dip AML or similar).
• Experience deputising for SMF functions or holding SMF17/MLRO responsibilities in previous roles.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.