Head of Fraud Risk Management

Role: Head of Fraud Risk Management

Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE

Role purpose:

• This is a Senior Management role within Group Risk Management directly responsible for developing a center of excellence for Fraud Risk Management (FRM) by leading and coaching a team of Fraud Risk Managers and Analysts that will drive the culture of FRM across ADIB Group.
• The role requires a proactive and confident individual, with a minimum of 15 years experience in Fraud Risk Management, who can communicate and build strong relationships across the wider business. Possess the ability to work in a matrix organization, leverage resources and capabilities across ADIB's businesses.
• The role is accountable for establishing, maintaining and independently overseeing an Group-wide FRM Policy/ Framework, covering prevention, detection, investigation coordination, response, recovery, remediation, reporting, analytics, training and continuous monitoring of internal fraud, external fraud including but not limited to application fraud, payment and card fraud, digital and e-channel fraud, social engineering, third-party/vendor fraud, cyber-enabled fraud and emerging fraud typologies.
• The role must ensure alignment with Board-approved risk appetite, CBUAE fraud-related regulations and notices, Operational Risk requirements, Consumer Protection expectations, AML/CFT and suspicious activity reporting interfaces, Model Management Standards where fraud rules, scoring engines or AI/ML models are used, and leading international practices including COSO/ACFE and Basel operational risk principles.

In addition, the role is responsible for:

• Guide leadership by providing expertise, advice and counsel to anticipate and manage fraud risks effectively.
• Oversee the adequacy and strength of the Internal control throughout and recommend management action to ensure the fraud risk profile supports the achievement of business objectives.
• Act as a trusted adviser to Senior Management on FRM aspects.
• Manage fraud incidents timely and conduct an exhaustive root cause analysis for major or frequent events.
• Retain fraud savings, fraud losses, recoveries and avoided loss as outcome measures, expand metrics to include gross fraud loss, net fraud loss, recovery rate, loss rate by channel/product, fraud savings, alert productivity, detection rate, false positive rate, remediation closure of CBUAE mandate, customer impact and training effectiveness.
• Replace purely activity-based metrics with a balanced scorecard covering risk outcome, control effectiveness, regulatory delivery, system performance, customer protection and fraud risk culture.

Key accountabilities of the role:

Strategy, Policy, Framework and Governance:

• Define, maintain and periodically refresh the Group Fraud Risk Management Strategy, Policy, Standards, Operating Model and Framework. Define and develop an operating model to best support process efficiencies and effectiveness in FRM.
• Implement consistent minimum fraud risk standards across ADIB Group, applying the stricter standard where Group standards and local regulatory requirements differ, subject to local legal and regulatory constraints.
• Develop and operate a risk-based fraud risk assessment methodology covering products, channels, processes, systems, vendors, outsourcing, new initiatives, material process changes and emerging typologies.
• Coordinate regulatory gap assessments, implementation plans, evidence packs, issue closure, regulatory readiness, supervisory responses and Board/Senior Management reporting for FRM-owned obligations and cross-functional dependencies.
• Operate effective fraud governance through the FRM Committee or equivalent forum, including agenda discipline, decisions, action tracking, escalation and reporting to MRC/BRC where required.
• Perform annual Group Fraud Risk Macro Assessment and periodic thematic assessments, using incidents, losses, RCSA, audit findings, complaints, external typologies, system performance, regulatory developments etc. to assess program maturity.

Process Management and Control Oversight:

• Challenge and oversee standardization, automation and process redesign to ensure fraud controls remain effective, customer-sensitive and aligned to risk appetite.
• Develop and maintain FRM capabilities, skills and infrastructure that comply with both internal policies and external regulations.
• Define escalation thresholds to ensure material control weaknesses, repeat incidents, issues and regulatory dependencies are escalated through relevant governance forums.
• Communicate and escalate to Senior Management on gaps and progress of gaps closures.
• Support the implementation of the FRM Policy/Framework and monitor the fraud metrics to identify potential control weaknesses.
• Review processes to identify fraud risks and deliver desired client experience across all channels/products.

Collaborate with key stakeholders/partners by:

• Sharing fraud trends and identifying emerging fraud threats.
• Leveraging on common tools, information and processes.
• Embedding fraud risks in RCSAs and review of new products, digital journeys, outsourcing, procedures, onboarding, process changes, and projects.
• Coordinating detection, deterrence, remediation, customer-impact assessment, loss recovery, disciplinary actions where applicable and sharing of lessons learnt.
• Ensuring timely escalation and coordination of reportable fraud incidents to relevant internal/external stakeholders, including law enforcement, regulators and internal stakeholders, etc.

Systems:

• Lead the fraud systems and analytics strategy across enterprise fraud monitoring, card and non-card transaction monitoring, behavioral analytics, mule account detection, anomaly detection, customer/device/network intelligence and case management
• Oversee fraud rules, scoring engines, AI/ML models and alert logic to ensure documented ownership, approved usage, data lineage, rule rationale, UAT evidence, performance monitoring, override governance, false positive and false negative monitoring, periodic tuning and user feedback.
• Ensure that fraud detection system is working effectively.
• Identify and review emerging and current fraud risk to fine tune the rules/parameters to improve fraud detection and coordinate with Model Risk Management for validation of fraud detection models/ model-like tools, including deterministic rule engines.

Analysis and Reporting:

• Develop Fraud Risk Dashboards for Senior Management and Board including fraud risk profile, risk appetite monitoring, historical trends, peer intelligence etc.
• Drive standardization and ensure investigative recommendations are fully adopted across ADIB Group. Ensure Lessons Learnt are shared with ADIB Group business units/countries on timely manner.
• Track remediation actions for closure and validate sustainability of control enhancements.
• Provide appropriate and regular assurance reporting and awareness of new trends in relation to Fraud Risks to Senior Management.

Training and Awareness:

• Work with HR and Management and provide training and guidance across the organization to facilitate culture and mindset change.
• Develop documented role-based anti-fraud training for all employees and targeted training for high-risk roles, including first-year enhanced training, annual refreshers.
• Lead internal fraud awareness and coordinate with Marketing teams the customer-facing education campaigns.

People and Talent:

• Build and lead a high-performing team with capabilities in fraud governance, digital fraud, payments, cards, analytics, investigations, regulations, controls assurance and stakeholder management.
• Set and monitor job descriptions and objectives for direct reports and provide feedback and rewards in line with their performance against those responsibilities and objectives.
• Ensure that holders of critical roles are suitably skilled and qualified for their roles, ensuring that they have effective supervision.
• Lead through examples and build the appropriate culture and values within the FRM team.
• Ensure adequate succession planning, independence, skills, training, objective setting and quality assurance across the FRM team and matrix resources.

General Management:

• Run/participate in appropriate business meetings, forums and committees.
• Maintain proactive engagement with regulators, UAE Banking Federation, peer banks and industry forums to identify emerging typologies, regulatory expectations, peer practices and strategic investment priorities.
• Assess emerging fraud risks, including those related to new products or significant processes/change as part of reviewing policies and procedures of business units.
• Work closely with line and business managers to understand the business, identify risk issues and promote solutions to management relevant fraud risks.
• Carry out ad hoc tasks assigned by or in consultation with/direction from the Group Chief Risk Officer and / or Head of Non-Financial Risks.

Specialist skills / technical knowledge, technical competencies required for this role:

• Strong understanding of enterprise fraud risk management.
• Outstanding interpersonal, communication and presentation skills.
• Ability to communicate with and gain confidence of the Bank's Senior Management.
• Ability to multi-task and work independently on initiatives.
• Good working knowledge of technology systems, e-commerce, online/electronic payments, accounting/finance analytical skills with proven ability to identify and develop solutions to improve fraud risk mitigation, reduction and avoidance.

Previous experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's Degree with over 15 years of experience.