Senior Merchant Underwriter, Risk Operations

Overview

Own the human-judgment layer of ClarityPay's merchant underwriting: review and sign off on cases escalated by the AI underwriting workflow, and help refine that workflow over time.

What you'll do

• Review merchant cases escalated by the AI underwriting workflow, validating its findings and recommendations and resolving the points flagged for human judgment.
• Provide final underwriting sign-off (approve, decline, or approve with conditions) within defined service levels and ClarityPay's risk appetite.
• Handle the most complex, sensitive, or high-exposure merchant cases, exercising independent judgment within established credit and risk policy.
• Document clear, defensible decision rationale for every case you sign off.
• Manage a queue of escalated cases, prioritizing exposure and urgency to meet turnaround targets for merchant onboarding and re-underwriting.
• Conduct hands-on review of merchant information across direct merchant submissions, business verification (KYB) and beneficial ownership, credit reports, public profiles and adverse media, and lawsuits, liens, and judgments.
• Analyze financial statements and bank data to assess liquidity, profitability, leverage, and the merchant's capacity to absorb refunds, chargebacks, and losses.
• Evaluate business model, fulfillment and delivery risk, and industry risk to size ClarityPay's counterparty exposure to each merchant.
• Recommend exposure limits, reserves, holdbacks, and other risk mitigants, with clearly documented rationale.
• Perform periodic re-underwriting and review escalated monitoring alerts, flagging material changes in merchant performance or risk profile.
• Incorporate dispute, chargeback, refund, and complaint trends into merchant risk assessments and decisions.
• Partner with Servicing, Compliance, and merchant-facing teams on merchants requiring remediation, limit changes, or offboarding.
• Provide structured feedback on the AI workflow recommendations so escalation logic, rules, and benchmarks improve over time.
• Identify recurring edge cases and recommend policy, data sources, or automation that can be refined to reduce unnecessary escalations.
• Contribute to underwriting policy, playbooks, SOPs, and decision guidelines that raise consistency across reviewers.
• Maintain accurate, audit-ready underwriting records (documents reviewed, findings, decisions, conditions, and approvals) in the case management system.
• Ensure every decision complies with ClarityPay credit and risk policy and applicable federal and state regulations, including KYB/AML and sanctions requirements.
• Participate in peer calibration and quality reviews so decisions stay consistent across underwriters and with historical precedent.

What you'll need

• 5-10 years of hands-on merchant underwriting or counterparty risk experience at a merchant acquirer, payment processor, payment facilitator, merchant network, BNPL/fintech lender, or other organization exposed to merchant counterparty risk, including direct responsibility for underwriting decisions or final sign-off.
• Experience from banks, commercial lenders, or specialty finance who have underwritten business financing, trade, or merchant-facing credit deals and can show the judgment this role requires is also welcome.
• Experience in a risk operations function where automated or rules-based processes handle routine underwriting and edge cases are escalated for review and final sign-off.
• Deep, hands-on review of merchant files (KYB and beneficial ownership, financial statements, credit reports, public records, litigation, and adverse media) and the judgment to reach a decision when signals conflict.
• Strong ability to read and interpret financial and bank statements, assess merchant solvency and liquidity, and size exposure limits, reserves, and holdbacks.
• Understanding of chargeback and dispute lifecycles, refund and future-delivery exposure, and merchant failure or bust-out risk.
• Working familiarity with KYB/AML, sanctions screening, and consumer-finance and payments regulations.
• Excellent written communication, with the ability to document concise, defensible decisions, explain them to internal stakeholders, and request and evaluate follow-up information from merchants.
• Comfort working with AI-assisted and automated decisioning tools, case management systems, and data sources such as credit bureaus, KYB providers, and public-records databases.
• Strong Excel skills.
• Sound judgment, strong attention to detail, and the autonomy to own cases end-to-end in a fast-growing environment.

Nice to have

• Payments, merchant acquiring, BNPL, or commercial credit background.
• Bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, economics, business, or related field.
• Experience helping design, train, or calibrate automated or AI-driven underwriting workflows, rules, or risk models.
• Underwriting experience in future delivery or higher-risk verticals (e.g., travel, ticketing, subscriptions, or elective healthcare).
• Working knowledge of SQL for self-serve analysis, or a relevant credential such as CAMS or credit/risk certification.

Details

• Location: Bangalore.