Senior SAR/CTR & BSA Compliance Manager

Pathward; United States; Hybrid; USD 72,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Pathward is seeking a Manager, SAR Filing to oversee the SAR/CTR filing program within the BSA/AML & Sanctions Operations team. The role ensures timely, complete, and defensible filings, supervising SAR filing analysts and managing intake, onboarding, and escalating processes across internal and external resources.

Managers will ensure regulatory timeliness, maintain intake quality, and coordinate with Security, Program Management, and Compliance to meet FinCEN requirements while guiding a team

Qualifications

• 6+ years of BSA/AML experience, including SAR processing, intake, or investigations.
• 2+ years of people leadership and/or oversight of consultants, vendors, or outsourced resources.
• Experience managing to SLAs, service levels, and quality standards in a regulated environment; familiarity with transaction monitoring/case systems.
• Demonstrated experience leading or supervising analysts.
• Experience overseeing or reviewing the output of third-party/outsourced or offshore review resources preferred.
• Experience presenting SAR metrics and program performance to senior leadership, examiners, and the Board.
• Deep expertise in SAR/CTR filing standards, continuing-activity monitoring, and FinCEN requirements.

Responsibilities

• Manage the day-to-day SAR and CTR filing program: timeliness, quality, continuing-activity monitoring, and FinCEN e-filing accuracy.
• Supervise the internal SAR filing analysts responsible for SAR/CTR preparation, quality review, and FinCEN e-filing.
• Own the day-to-day SAR intake process – receipt, triage, completeness review, and routing of referrals into the filing workflow – across internal and consultant-delivered channels.
• Manage regulatory timeliness (SAR filing clocks, continuing activity deadlines) and ensure aging, backlog, and capacity are actively monitored and escalated.
• Ensure intake documentation meets the five-element documentation baseline and internal quality standards before hand-off to the filing team.
• Balance volume and coverage across internal and external resources; reallocate work to protect timeliness and quality.
• Oversee the operational review of SAR referrals originating from the internal Alerts and Cases teams.
• Manage the escalation channel through which internal teams and external consultants surface potential SARs; ensure each is independently reviewed and that Pathward retains all filing and decisioning authority.
• Coordinate least-privilege system access, data-handling, residency, and offboarding controls for domestic and offshore consultant staff in partnership with Information Security and Program Management.
• Provide and oversee independent QA of consultant output, ensuring third-party dispositions and referrals meet Pathward’s validated standards before reliance.
• Coordinate hand-offs and feedback loops with the SAR filing team, Alerts, Cases, Complex Investigations, and Sanctions to ensure smooth end-to-end flow.
• Support the VP’s relationship management with consultants/vendors – contributing to service reviews, scoping, and continuous-improvement discussions.
• Support regulatory examinations, internal audit, and validation efforts by preparing intake artifacts and responding to information requests.

Skills

SAR filing

BSA/AML experience

Regulatory reporting

Leadership

Quality assurance

Education

Bachelor's degree

MBA preferred

JD or Master's preferred

Tools

FinCEN e-filing

Case management systems

Job description

Pathward is seeking a Manager, SAR Filing to oversee the SAR/CTR filing program within the BSA/AML & Sanctions Operations team. The role ensures timely, complete, and defensible filings, supervising SAR filing analysts and managing intake, onboarding, and escalating processes across internal and external resources.

Managers will ensure regulatory timeliness, maintain intake quality, and coordinate with Security, Program Management, and Compliance to meet FinCEN requirements while guiding a team