Financial Crime Senior Manager

Thistle Initiatives is a multi-award-winning regulatory consultancy, providing expert compliance advice and support across the financial services sector. Our clients range from e-money institution and Fin Tech traditional financial services firms.

We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Manager to join our Financial Crime team and build a dynamic career  team supports both regulated and unregulated firms, helping them navigate the UK’s financial crime compliance requirements. More recently we have begun supporting some of our larger longer-standing clients with their global requirements, highlighting our growing expansion and the confidence our clients place in our knowledge and expertise.

You’ll play a pivotal role in helping clients build and maintain robust financial crime systems and controls. The successful candidate will bring deep engagement management experience, and a strong understanding of regulatory expectations across both established financial services firms and startups.

Responsibilities are wide-ranging and varied, given the exciting projects we work on. We are keen to speak to people with a passion for learning new things and problem solving.

• Lead and deliver high-quality Skilled Person and audit engagements of clients’ financial crime systems and controls, across AML, sanctions, fraud, anti-bribery and corruption and fraud.
• Advise on the implementation and optimisation of financial crime tools and systems, including transaction monitoring and PEP and sanctions screening.
• Support financial crime transformation and remediation projects, ensuring clients have efficient and effective financial crime compliance systems and controls.
• Draft and review policies, procedures and risk assessments tailored to clients’ business, size and risk profile.
• Manage multiple client engagements, from scoping through delivery, ensuring regulatory alignment and operational effectiveness.
• Strong understanding of the UK’s financial crime legislation framework, including but not limited to Proceeds of Crime, Bribery, Terrorism, Criminal Finances & Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency acts and be able to apply knowledge of the Money Laundering Regulations and guidance to the business requirements of our clients.
• Stay abreast of developments in financial crime legislation, regulation, guidance updates, FCA enforcement and focus areas, translating them into actionable insights for clients.

• Shape and promote our financial crime offerings in collaboration with senior leadership.
• Contribute to go-to-market strategies targeting specific sectors and controls based on business development industry knowledge.
• Create thought leadership content on financial crime to help drive business development and pipeline.
• Respond to RFPs, including developing high-quality proposals, and support and lead pitches to prospective clients.
• Represent the firm at industry events, webinars, and forums focused on financial crime.
• Experience in public speaking or presenting at client or industry events is a plus.

• Coach and develop junior team members, with a particular emphasis on building technical knowledge around financial crime to support their growth and career.
• Champion cross-functional collaboration with other teams to support Thistle being clients trusted financial crime and compliance trusted adviser.
• Help create a learning environment focused on innovation, continuous improvement, and staying ahead of industry developments.

• Act as a key contact for clients on financial crime.
• Build and maintain relationships with vendors, regulators, and industry bodies to support our growth.
• Promote knowledge-sharing across the firm to raise awareness of financial crime compliance trends.
• Ability to manage multiple engagements at different stages, prioritising urgent matters when they arise, escalating matters to senior leadership, when necessary, as well as delegating to junior team members for support.
• Strong communicator, capable of translating complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Commercially aware…