Head of Risk & Underwriting, Payments

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Develop, sustain, and enhance merchant underwriting policies, procedures, approval standards, restricted or prohibited business categories, risk matrices, and escalation protocols.

• Oversee the complete underwriting process for new merchant, platform, and embedded finance partnerships.

• Assess business models, ownership structures, beneficial ownership, processing history, financial condition, delivery risks, industry risks, expected volumes, and payout activities.

• Establish underwriting criteria for the creator economy, marketplaces, platforms, B2B2C, high-risk, and emerging payment models.

• Define approval authority levels, review requirements, exception processes, merchant risk categories, and documentation standards.

• Collaborate with Sales, Product, Operations, Legal, and Compliance teams to promote responsible growth.

• Manage portfolio monitoring across transaction activities, settlement exposures, chargebacks, ACH returns, disputes, reversals, negative balances, refunds, fraud indicators, and operational risk signals.

• Set volume limits, velocity controls, exposure thresholds, funding holds, reserve requirements, collateral requirements, and other risk controls.

• Create periodic merchant reviews, enhanced due diligence, trigger-based reviews, and annual risk reassessment procedures.

• Identify portfolio trends and emerging risks, including concentration, industry, platform, delayed delivery, and merchant behavior risks.

• Collaborate with Finance and Operations to resolve settlement failures, funding gaps, reconciliation issues, loss events, and recovery matters.

• Design and manage fraud prevention and mitigation controls across acquiring, payouts, card activities, ACH activities, account activities, and platform-based payment flows.

• Establish escalation procedures for fraud incidents, high-risk activities, suspicious merchant behavior, disputes, chargebacks, return rates, and urgent partner notifications.

• Assist with incident response, containment, internal reporting, partner communication, remediation, and post-event reviews.

• Manage the configuration and performance of identity verification, KYB/KYC, underwriting, fraud detection, transaction monitoring, and merchant risk tools.

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Data, and Operations to develop automated underwriting, risk scoring, risk segmentation, fraud detection, and transaction monitoring systems.

• Evaluate and apply AI, machine learning, and rules-based decision-making tools with governance, testing, documentation, and human oversight.

• Monitor model and rules performance, false positives, false negatives, approval rates, fraud rates, loss rates, chargeback rates, return rates, and manual review queues.

• Ensure risk systems deliver reliable reporting, audit trails, and decision documentation.

• Guarantee that underwriting and payment risk activities comply with relevant laws, regulations, card network rules, NACHA requirements, sponsor bank requirements, processor requirements, and internal policies.

• Act as the senior risk contact for sponsor banks, processors, vendors, auditors, and external partners.

• Prepare and present risk reports, metrics, trends, loss events, portfolio issues, and recommendations to leadership and risk governance forums.

• Support BSA/AML, payments risk, merchant risk, and associated governance documents as products, payment rails, geographical areas, and customer segments evolve.

• Collaborate with Compliance and Legal on suspicious activity escalations, regulatory inquiries, audits, exams, partner reviews, and third-party risk management.

• Review new products, payment flows, platform models, and significant product changes through a risk and compliance perspective prior to launch.

• Build and expand the risk and underwriting function, including policies, workflows, metrics, quality assurance, documentation, and team structure.

• Train internal teams on risk appetite, underwriting standards, prohibited or restricted categories, referral escalations, and responsible growth.

• Develop practical risk guidance for Sales and Product teams.

• Make judgment-based decisions that balance customer experience, commercial opportunities, partner expectations, and risk.

• Within the first 90 days, familiarize yourself with products, payment flows, partner requirements, customer segments, and existing risk controls; evaluate processes, identify gaps, and develop a scaling roadmap.

• In the first six months, enhance underwriting standards, strengthen portfolio monitoring, formalize escalation procedures, improve reporting, and support growth with risk discipline.

• Build a scalable risk and underwriting function that safeguards Manifest, encourages responsible revenue growth, bolsters partner confidence, and enhances the legitimate customer experience.

⛳️ Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in payments risk, merchant acquiring, merchant underwriting, fintech risk, fraud risk, embedded finance, payment facilitator risk, or similar financial services risk roles.

• Extensive experience underwriting and managing risk for higher-risk merchant categories, marketplaces, platforms, or complex payment flows.

• Strong knowledge of merchant acquiring, payment processing, underwriting, settlement, reserves, chargebacks, disputes, ACH returns, fraud, and loss recovery.

• Profound understanding of Visa, Mastercard, NACHA, PCI DSS, sponsor bank oversight, processor requirements, and payment facilitator or embedded finance risk mandates.

• Experience in designing and implementing underwriting policies, risk matrices, monitoring rules, escalation procedures, and operational controls.

• Familiarity with BSA/AML, OFAC, KYC/KYB, suspicious activity escalation, beneficial ownership, and third-party risk management obligations.

• Direct experience working with sponsor banks, processors, card networks, payment facilitators, marketplaces, or embedded finance initiatives.

• Capability to make practical, well-documented risk decisions in a dynamic environment.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to convey complex risk, compliance, and operational challenges into clear business recommendations.

• Experience in building or scaling risk operations, underwriting workflows, QA processes, and reporting in a growth-stage company.

• Strong operational mindset with sound judgment, curiosity, accountability, and a sense of humor.

• Preferred: experience with the creator economy, marketplace, gig economy, platform, B2B2C, or small business payment models.

• Preferred: experience with payment facilitator, embedded finance, sponsor bank, or banking-as-a-service program structures.

• Preferred: familiarity with ACH, wires, card payments, push-to-card, RTP, FedNow, and emerging payment rails.

• Preferred: experience in implementing or managing KYB/KYC, fraud, transaction monitoring, case management, or merchant risk platforms.

• Preferred: experience with automated underwriting, rules engines, risk scoring, behavioral analytics, AI/ML-enabled fraud tools, or model governance.

• Preferred: previous experience managing audits, sponsor bank reviews, processor reviews, regulatory exams, compliance testing, or remediation plans.

• Preferred: experience in hiring, training, and managing underwriting, fraud, or risk operations team members.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equal opportunity employer.

• Inclusive work environment.

• Collaborative team atmosphere.

• Opportunity to tackle exciting challenges and influence the future of financial services.

• Chance to contribute to the growth and scaling of a flourishing fintech business.