Financial Crime Manager

Stake is looking for a Financial Crime Manager to join our wonderful Finance team, at our brand new CBD office, within a flexible hybrid working model!

We’re an Australian investing platform that helps ambitious people confidently grow their wealth. By offering seamless, immersive access to the share markets, we’ve empowered a new wave of investors. Stake has grown fast from a fintech startup into a robust financial services company. Today we have 750,000+ customers and more than A$5 billion under administration.

At Stake, we break barriers in everything we do. Just like our customers, we’re driven by ambition. Our desire for continuous growth is what creates the collaborative and high-performance environment we work in. Though we’re spread around the world, we’re a unified team moving towards a shared vision: to unleash the investor in everyone.

Join us as we continue to reshape the financial industry, inspiring investor confidence and celebrating our wins along the way.

About this role

As the Financial Crime Manager, you will be responsible for leading and overseeing the organisation’s Transaction Monitoring and Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) functions. This role carries end-to-end accountability for the effectiveness of financial crime detection, investigation, and reporting frameworks, ensuring alignment with regulatory obligations, internal risk appetite, and strategic business objectives.

You will provide leadership across financial crime operations, driving continuous improvement, scalability, and risk-based decision-making while ensuring strong governance and oversight. As a senior subject matter expert, you will partner closely with Compliance, Risk, Legal, and senior stakeholders to enhance the organisation’s financial crime control environment and proactively respond to emerging risks.

This role plays a critical part in safeguarding the business from financial crime by embedding robust controls, ensuring high-quality investigative outcomes, and fostering a culture of accountability, compliance, and operational excellence.

Further responsibilities include:

• Lead and manage the Transaction Monitoring and ECDD functions, ensuring effective detection, investigation, and escalation of financial crime risks.
• Provide strategic direction and oversight to the team, setting clear priorities aligned with financial crime risk and business objectives.
• Own and enhance the financial crime detection and investigation frameworks, ensuring they remain risk-based, efficient, and compliant with regulatory requirements.
• Oversee and be accountable for the ECDD framework, including the review and investigation of high-risk customers and complex cases.
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex, high-risk, or sensitive financial crime matters, providing expert guidance and decision-making.
• Oversee the quality, consistency, and timeliness of Suspicious Matter Reports (SMRs) and other regulatory reporting obligations.
• Establish, monitor, and report on operational KPIs, KRIs, and SLAs, ensuring performance is aligned with risk appetite and regulatory expectations.
• Drive optimisation of workflows through the effective use of technology, automation, and data analytics to improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability of operations.
• Ensure all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) across Transaction Monitoring and ECDD are well-defined, regularly reviewed, and kept up to date in line with regulatory requirements and internal policies.
• Ensure strong governance, documentation, and auditability across all financial crime processes and case management activities.
• Partner with Compliance, Risk, Legal, Product, and senior business stakeholders to manage financial crime risks and implement control enhancements.
• Stay ahead of emerging financial crime threats, regulatory changes, and industry trends, adapting frameworks and controls accordingly.

A bit about you

• Financial Crime Expertise (TM & ECDD): Deep knowledge of transaction monitoring, enhanced customer due diligence, and financial crime typologies, with the ability to assess complex, high-risk cases.
• Risk-Based Decision Making & Judgment: Strong ability to evaluate ambiguous or sensitive situations, make defensible decisions, and act as a senior escalation point.
• Leadership & Strategic Direction: Experience leading teams, setting priorities, and aligning operational delivery with broader risk appetite and business objectives.
• Framework Design & Continuous Improvement: Capability to build, optimise, and evolve detection and investigation frameworks to ensure they are effective, scalable, and compliant.
• Regulatory & Compliance Expertise: Solid understanding of AML/CTF obligations (e.g. SMRs), regulatory expectations, and audit requirements, with a focus on maintaining strong governance.
• Operational Excellence & Performance Management: Skilled in defining and managing KPIs/KRIs/SLAs, driving efficiency, quality, and consistency across high-volume operations.
• Data, Systems & Process Optimisation: Ability to leverage technology, automation, and analytics to improve workflows and enhance detection capabilities.
• Stakeholder Management & Influence: Strong cross-functional collaboration with Compliance, Risk, Legal, Product, and senior stakeholders to drive outcomes and manage risk effectively.

At Stake, we’re more interested in your attitude than your resume. If you believe this is a role you want to jump into, please apply and let us know why in your cover letter!

Benefits of working at Stake

You’ll have the opportunity to work with autonomy while learning from some of the best talent in the industry, playing a meaningful role in building a company that has loads of positive momentum and excitement around it. Having said that, we also have perks.

Please see on our Careers website the list of benefits under our Grow with Stake program. They include:

• Career relevant development and training with professional development allowance
• Up to 16 weeks of paid parental leave
• Childcare allowance
• Sonder - healthcare, safety support and EAP for you and your immediate family
• Additional leave types (Swap days, Bear Days, TOIL, Compassionate, Sorry Business)
• Employee Share Options scheme for senior leaders
• Stake products: SMSF 30% discount on yearly membership fee, $295 AUD annual trading credit and Stake Black account
• Recognition awards and team celebrations
• Discretionary performance bonus and talent referral bonus

Stake is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We’re proactive about providing an inclusive work environment and do not discriminate based on race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability status. We’re also endorsed by WORK180 as a great employer for women.

It all comes together to explain why Stake placed 1st in the 2024 AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list for the Banking, Superannuation & Financial Services category, across all of Australia and New Zealand.

So what happens next?

Once we've received your application, we'll give it the attention it deserves and you'll hear from us either way. We’re committed to responding to every applicant. If we think you’d be a good addition to our team, we’ll give you a call and from there, you'll cruise through our recruitment process.

To all recruitment agencies: Stake does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias or directly to Stake employees. Stake is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.