Job description

Job Summary

The role of Director, CFCR Advisory, CIB Client Coverage & Transaction Banking, UAE & Middle East, is a pivotal position within Standard Chartered's banking operations, focused on providing expert second line of defence advisory services. This function serves as a critical element in ensuring the bank’s Corporate and Institutional Banking (CIB) activities comply fully with financial crime regulations, conduct risk expectations, and overall regulatory requirements throughout the UAE and Middle East region. You will offer independent, risk-based guidance and challenge to the client coverage and transaction banking teams to facilitate sustainable business growth that aligns with the bank’s risk appetite. This includes promoting a risk-aware culture, ensuring adherence to regulatory frameworks, and supporting strategic initiatives to foster compliance excellence.
In this role, you will work closely with senior management and key stakeholders to identify, assess, manage, and escalate financial crime, conduct, and regulatory risks. Your expertise will be vital in driving governance oversight, engaging with regulators, and enhancing risk management practices through trusted advisory input. Through collaboration across multiple teams and jurisdictions, you will contribute to the bank’s vision of ethical and compliant business practices while supporting its commercial objectives in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.

Key Responsibilities:

• Serve as a senior independent advisor on compliance, financial crime compliance (FCC), and conduct risk issues impacting the Corporate and Institutional Banking (CIB) Client Coverage and Transaction Banking businesses within UAE and the Middle East, ensuring robust risk controls and ethical standards.
• Provide timely and insightful risk-based advice and challenge related to client onboarding, ongoing relationships, transactions, new business initiatives, and remediation programmes, helping the business navigate complex regulatory requirements.
• Continuously monitor and assess emerging financial crime and regulatory risks, promptly escalating concerns and advising on appropriate mitigation strategies to senior leadership and governance bodies.
• Support and contribute to comprehensive Compliance Risk Assessments (CRA) and Product Risk Assessments (PRA), enabling identification and management of risk exposures within client lifecycle and product offerings.
• Offer subject matter expertise in Anti-Money Laundering (AML), sanctions compliance, Anti-Bribery and Corruption (ABC), regulatory compliance, and conduct risk, guiding the business to uphold stringent compliance standards.
• Lead and support regulatory examination preparations, audit engagements, thematic reviews, and remediation actions, ensuring regulatory expectations are met effectively and expediently.
• Contribute to the implementation of the bank’s Corporate and Institutional Banking (CIB) strategy, aligning risk frameworks with business growth within approved risk appetite boundaries.
• Champion the consistent application of Group-wide standards and regulatory obligations, balancing global policies with local jurisdictional requirements.
• Prepare detailed risk insights, reports, and management information for senior management committees and other governance forums to facilitate informed decision-making.
• Foster collaborative relationships across business units, country CFCR teams, financial crime specialists, internal audit, risk functions, and regulatory agencies to enhance the effectiveness of risk management practices.

Skills and Experience Requirements:

• Must-Have Skills:
  • Demonstrable experience delivering strategic Compliance, Financial Crime and Conduct Risk (CFCR) advisory and challenge within a regulated banking environment.
  • Strong expertise in regulatory compliance and financial crime risk management frameworks relevant to the UAE and Middle East jurisdictions.
  • In-depth understanding of financial crime typologies, sanctions regimes, anti-bribery and corruption controls, and conduct risk principles applicable to Corporate and Institutional Banking sectors.
• Other Essential Skills:
  • Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing capabilities, able to engage senior leaders and diverse teams effectively.
  • Rich familiarity with client coverage and transaction banking operations, enabling targeted risk advice aligned with business activities.
  • Familiarity with governance structures, risk and control environments, and compliance risk assessment methodologies.
  • Ability to synthesise complex regulatory requirements into clear, actionable guidance and to communicate risk findings persuasively across audiences.

Qualifications and Professional Background:

• Proven extensive experience in Compliance, Financial Crime Compliance, Regulatory Compliance or Risk Management within international banking or financial services, ideally with exposure to the UAE and Middle East banking landscape.
• Track record providing senior advisory support and independent challenge to Corporate, Commercial or Institutional Banking lines of business, demonstrating sound judgement and risk insight.
• Hands-on involvement managing regulatory engagements, audits, thematic reviews, and complex remediation programmes with successful outcomes.
• Comprehensive knowledge of AML, sanctions, anti-bribery and corruption standards, conduct risk frameworks, and broader compliance policies.
• Previous roles requiring operation within multi-jurisdictional contexts, appreciating local regulatory nuances and cultural factors important to risk management.
• Strong ability to influence senior stakeholders and to navigate matrix organisational structures effectively.
• Educational Credentials: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional qualifications in law, finance, business, or related fields.
• Languages: Proficiency in English is mandatory; Arabic language skills are desirable and considered an asset but not a pre-requisite.

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.