Role Purpose:
The Head of Operational Risk & Fraud Risk will be responsible for leading the Bank's operational risk and fraud risk management frameworks.
The role is required to maintain oversight including direct involvement at times over operational risk controls, incident management, RCSA, business continuity, fraud prevention, fraud detection, investigation, response, recovery, including operational resilience, customer protection, and compliance with applicable regulatory expectations, including CBUAE requirements and relevant business conduct obligations.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Operational Risk Framework & Governance
- Lead the implementation and ongoing enhancement of the Bank's Operational Risk Management Framework in line with the Board-approved Risk Management Framework/regulatory requirement.
- Oversee operational risk processes including control testing, incident management, incident validation, business impact analysis, threat analysis, and root-cause reviews.
- Maintain oversight of the Operational Risk Incident Register and ensure timely escalation and reporting of material incidents.
- Identify operational control gaps, process weaknesses, and improvement opportunities across departments, including alignment with internal policies, regulatory requirements, and IT controls.
2. Fraud Risk Management Framework
- Own the Bank-wide Anti-Fraud Framework covering fraud prevention, detection, investigation, response, recovery, and reporting.
- Establish fraud risk assessments across products, digital channels, cards, payments, online platforms, and third-party arrangements.
- Oversee fraud prevention and detection controls including transaction monitoring, rule tuning, velocity checks, behavioral indicators, and escalation mechanisms.
3. Fraud Prevention, Detection & Incident Response
- Coordinate with IT, Cyber Security, Compliance, MLRO, Legal, Operations, Cards, Payments, and Digital Banking teams on fraud-related matters.
- Ensure adequate customer protection controls, including strong customer authentication, step-up controls, customer alerts, complaint handling coordination, and reimbursement governance where applicable.
- Monitor card-present, card-not-present, payment, merchant, digital banking, and emerging fraud typologies, including disputes and chargeback-related risks.
4. Operational Resilience, BCP & Scenario Testing
- Lead the development, maintenance, and annual reporting of the Business Continuity Planning process.
- Integrate operational risk, fraud, and cyber-enabled fraud scenarios into operational resilience, business continuity, and crisis management testing.
- Ensure severe but plausible scenario testing is performed for critical products, digital channels, payment systems, cards, and important third-party dependencies.
5. Risk Monitoring, Reporting & Regulatory Engagement
- Define, monitor, and report operational risk and fraud-related KRIs, KPIs, incidents, losses, near misses, thematic trends, and emerging risks.
- Prepare management reports and committee updates on operational risk, fraud risk, control issues, remediation status, and key risk themes.
- Ensure timely regulatory notification and reporting of material operational or fraud incidents in coordination with Compliance and other relevant functions.
- Maintain evidence-ready documentation for material incidents, including timelines, root cause, customer impact, remediation actions, and control enhancements.
6. Third-Party, Vendor & Technology Risk Interface
- Coordinate with IT and relevant business teams to enhance automation, monitoring, controls, access logging, and risk reporting across operational and fraud risk areas.
- Oversee fraud-relevant third-party arrangements, including service performance, incident support, audit trails, MIS, dispute workflows, rule tuning, and SLA oversight.
- Support third-party risk assessments for vendors supporting cards, payments, fraud monitoring, digital banking, authentication, SMS gateways, device intelligence, biometrics, and related services.
7. Policy, Product & Business Support
- Gather inputs from operational risk/fraud risk team and provide operational risk and fraud risk inputs for new products, services, processes, digital initiatives, and SOPs.
- Support periodic review and enhancement of operational risk, fraud risk, conduct risk, business continuity, and related policies and procedures.
- Contribute to annual conduct risk assessment, insurance-related renewals, and governance documentation, in coordination with the CRO and relevant stakeholders.
8. Training, Awareness & Risk Culture
- Promote a strong risk-aware culture across the Bank with clear first-line accountability for operational and fraud controls.
- Design and deliver fraud awareness, operational risk, and incident reporting training for staff and frontline teams.
- Support customer fraud awareness initiatives covering scams, safe banking practices, and dispute escalation channels.
Minimum Requirements
- UAE National / Emirati candidate, preferably with experience in banking, financial services, risk management, operations, fraud risk, digital banking, cards, or payments.
- 10+ years of relevant experience, exposure to operational risk, fraud risk management, internal controls, incident management, banking operations, regulatory reporting, or governance.
- Strong understanding of operational risk management, fraud prevention and detection, business continuity, operational resilience, digital channels, cards, payments, and customer protection expectations.
- Working knowledge of CBUAE regulatory expectations, operational risk standards, consumer protection requirements, payment-related controls.
- Ability to work with senior management, Compliance, MLRO, IT, Cyber Security, Operations, Cards, Payments, Digital Banking, Legal, Internal Audit, and external vendors.
Key Competencies
- Operational risk and fraud risk subject matter expertise
- Strong control orientation and ability to challenge constructively
- Regulatory awareness and evidence-based documentation discipline
- Ability to drive cross-functional coordination across business, operations, technology, compliance, and control functions.
