Financial Crime Operations Executive Manager

Overview

Provide strategic and operational leadership for a large Financial Crime Operations portfolio supporting CommBank's Australian operations from India, leading one or more financial crime disciplines through a period of regulatory, technological and operational change.

What you'll do

• Lead the strategy and execution of a large and complex Financial Crime Operations portfolio.
• Translate enterprise and Economic Crime Services priorities into clear operational plans, measures and accountabilities.
• Deliver agreed service, quality, productivity, customer and risk outcomes.
• Maintain effective oversight of operational capacity, queue health, demand, productivity, ageing, service levels and emerging risks.
• Ensure the operating model remains sustainable, scalable and aligned to changing business and regulatory requirements.
• Provide clear, timely and evidence-based reporting to senior leadership and governance forums.
• Make sound decisions across competing priorities, balancing immediate operational requirements with long-term strategic outcomes.
• Support operational resilience and continuity through effective workforce, succession and contingency planning.
• Promote strong risk ownership and ensure financial crime risks are identified, assessed, escalated and managed within applicable frameworks.
• Maintain effective oversight of operational controls, incidents, issues, quality results, audit actions and remediation commitments.
• Ensure operations comply with relevant policies, procedures, regulatory obligations and agreed risk appetite.
• Oversee complex investigations and escalations, ensuring decisions are appropriately evidenced, documented and governed.
• Partner with Compliance, Risk and Quality teams to interpret requirements and implement them consistently across operations.
• Champion a proactive risk culture where colleagues feel safe and accountable to identify concerns, challenge decisions and raise emerging risks.
• Ensure changes to processes, controls, detection approaches and operational procedures are assessed and implemented through appropriate governance.
• Lead the successful operational implementation of strategic change, including new processes, platforms, analytical models and risk-based detection and investigation approaches.
• Identify opportunities to simplify work, improve controls, remove duplication and increase operational efficiency.
• Use data and insights to improve decision-making, workforce deployment, quality and customer outcomes.
• Champion responsible adoption of automation, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to improve financial crime detection and operational effectiveness.
• Ensure new technology and process changes are supported by appropriate operational readiness, capability, controls and governance.
• Build a culture of curiosity, experimentation and continuous improvement while maintaining effective risk management.
• Act as a senior FCO representative and trusted partner between the India-based operation and Australian business, operations, risk and compliance teams.
• Build strong, transparent and constructive relationships with senior stakeholders across Economic Crime Services, Financial Crime Compliance, Risk, Quality Assurance, Technology, Transformation, Workforce and Human Resources.
• Surface risks, dependencies and trade-offs early and provide practical recommendations to support decisions.
• Influence outcomes across organisational boundaries without relying solely on formal authority.
• Promote a whole-of-organisation mindset and ensure that local delivery decisions support broader enterprise outcomes.
• Represent the portfolio in senior operational, risk, governance and transformation forums as required.
• Lead and inspire a large, diverse workforce through a clear sense of purpose and shared accountability.
• Build a strong leadership team with clear responsibilities, effective spans of control and robust succession plans.
• Attract, develop and retain high-quality financial crime and operations talent.
• Coach senior leaders to strengthen strategic thinking, risk ownership, commercial judgement and people leadership.
• Set clear performance expectations and ensure fair, consistent and timely performance and development conversations.
• Build capability through targeted learning, cross-skilling, leadership development and career pathways.
• Foster an inclusive and psychologically safe environment where diverse perspectives are welcomed.
• Role-model the organisation's values and leadership principles, including care, courage and commitment.
• Strengthen engagement, wellbeing and connection across teams while maintaining accountability for outcomes.

What you'll need

• Significant senior leadership experience in Financial Crime Operations in banking, compliance, risk operations or a comparable regulated environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading large, complex and multi-layered operational teams.
• Strong knowledge of one or more financial crime areas, including Transaction Monitoring, AML/CTF operations, ECDD/CDD/KYC, customer or payment screening, fraud investigations, SMR/SAR processes, remediation or quality oversight.
• Proven ability to lead safe operational delivery while managing risk, quality, customer and productivity outcomes.
• Strong understanding of operational risk, controls, incidents, issues, governance and assurance.
• Experience leading transformation, technology-enabled change or operating-model redesign.
• Ability to interpret complex information and translate it into clear strategic and operational decisions.
• Strong executive communication, influencing and stakeholder-management skills.
• Demonstrated ability to build high-performing leadership teams and strong succession pipelines.
• Experience working across geographies, cultures or global delivery models.
• Strong data literacy and ability to use operational and risk insights to drive decisions.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Nice to have

• Knowledge of Australian financial crime and AML/CTF regulatory expectations.
• Experience supporting Australian banking or financial-services operations.
• Exposure to financial crime case-management, screening, analytics or workflow platforms.
• Experience using automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning or advanced analytics in an operational or financial crime setting.
• Experience with Lean, Six Sigma, agile delivery or continuous-improvement methodologies.
• Professional certification such as CAMS, CFE or another recognised financial crime, risk or compliance qualification.

Details

• Location: Bangalore, India.
• Reporting to: General Manager, Financial Crime Operations, CBA India.
• Business & team: Economic Crime Services - Financial Crime Operations.
• Advertising end date: 26/10/2026.