Job Description

Office

Singapore

Team

Banking and Expansion

People and businesses all over the world use Wise to avoid big bank fees and week-long international wires when they send, spend, and receive money abroad. We have over 12 million customers who move £6 billion every month with us. We help them save £3 million in bank fees every day. We have been expanding our operations to markets in APAC for the past 8 years and we currently help customers send, receive, hold and spend money in multiple currencies and markets across Asia and Pacific. But compared to the size of the APAC market, it’s still just a drop in the bucket. With your help, we’ll fill that bucket up. We’re looking for a Banking and Expansion Lead to join our team in our Singapore office. Our banking relationships determine the quality of our product and a large part of its economics. And our relationships with regulators, governments and payment systems are crucial too. So, we're on the hunt for an executor and people lead with a brilliant mind and strong communication skills to help more customers save money with us.
Your mission: 1. Lead the Banking and Expansions Team – APAC. This includes supporting the team expanding and improving our regional offering of products in Asia & Pacific.

• We currently have 11 team members, spread across various Wise offices in the region, including Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, Mumbai and Jakarta. You will be actively supporting our growing team and office footprint across the region.
  
• This team operates independently, they are experts on each of the markets they cover, alongside our Regional Product teams. The team will benefit from your leadership, guidance, coaching and support.
  
• Lead, coach and inspire the Team to work out the optimal regulatory set-ups for priority markets in the region. This requires considering whether we should obtain our own licence and if so, leading that process. Alternatively, you will help the team decide to deliver another structure, such as a partnership with another licensed institution, managing the corresponding risks.
  
• Lead, coach and inspire the Team to enhance risk and governance framework together with Risk, Compliance and Company Secretary teams in each market, especially mature markets, within a highly regulated environment.
  
• Lead, coach and inspire the Team to build new relationships and improve existing ones with relevant financial institutions. This includes finding the right potential partners, pitching Wise as a client, negotiating the commercial contracts, completing account opening forms, explaining our compliance processes, passing due diligence, and doing anything else needed to be ready for development.

2. Working with the Product Managers, help define the opportunities and direction for our products in APAC. Collaborate across teams and inspire others so that we deliver the best international banking solution.

• Drive the strategic geographical expansion of Wise across APAC.
• Drive the strategic deepening efforts of Wise’s connection to domestic payment rails in APAC. Help the product team prioritise potential product changes across the region that would have the biggest impact for our customers.
• Work closely with product teams (Product Managers and Product Engineers) to develop our vision and build better products and experiences for our customers. Your contribution will mainly be from the payments infrastructure, regulatory and operational banking partnerships point of view.
• Work with our Compliance, Privacy ,Legal and Government Relations teams in managing our relationships with regulators and other important non-commercial relationships, such as the governments.
• Work with our global teams (Product, Finance, Treasury, etc.) to ensure our APAC customers and products are at the centre of our mission.
• Work with the global product teams, such as Spend and Verification, to define new propositions (e.g. issuance as a service, spend like a local).

3. Serve in regulatory roles, as necessary, taking some Director roles in our multiple subsidiaries across the region. This will give you the opportunity to oversee our operations in certain markets and provide ongoing direction. 4. Represent Wise in APAC, working with Public Relations and Product Marketing teams to drive brand awareness and position Wise as a key industry player. 5. Outside of APAC, you will be one of the key drivers of our global expansion strategy. You will work with our wider Banking and Expansion Team and our Regional Expansion Tribe (other squads focus on Europe, North America, Latin America, and MEA) to raise the bar for our expansion globally. 6. Together with the compliance team, understand existing and new regulations, figuring out the best way in which our product and setup are compliant with them. We see regulation as an opportunity, and we want you to help us achieving that vision!
This role will give you the opportunity to:

• Have a real, lasting impact on how global people move money around the world, in some of the most difficult and underserved markets in the world.
• Choose your own path to success – you’ll have the freedom to define the vision and the responsibility for making it happen.
• Be flexible in how and where you work, we understand everyone needs a little something different so we’ll do our best to make it happen.
• Travel to work with our teams globally, as well as meet various partners and organisations when needed.
• Inspire teams with your ideas, knowledge and self-starting attitude.

You may be a good fit if you:

• Have led and grown teams of 10 or more individuals. You excel at building strong, diverse teams, constantly inspiring them. You are able to get the team to dream big.
• Have worked in a fast – moving environment, are happy to work independently, flexibly and take the initiative. You have experience growing an early stage company into something larger.
• Are hands on and a strong individual contributor. You thrive as a player-coach. You are able to operate at many levels of detail, flipping between executing as an individual contributor and leading a wider team. Everyone in Wise still executes projects as well, starting from our CEO. We work in autonomous teams, so you’ll need an entrepreneurial and collaborative mindset to thrive.
• Have negotiated commercial relationships with a clear product vision and understanding in mind. You are able to figure out the ideal operational and commercial process with new partners.
• Feel comfortable making hard decisions and bringing others on board. You are able to build consensus around a multi-year vision and do whatever it takes to get there.
• Are familiar with how corporate banks and financial institutions work and their decision makers. You are excellent at managing those relationships and are constantly creating opportunities to improve them.
• Have a detailed understanding of payments and FX regulations in a changing environment and an interest in AML/KYC and risk controls.
• Understand how local and international payments work. Ideally, with specific knowledge of payment systems in some of the APAC countries.
• Are passionate about our mission and transforming the financial industry for good.
• Have flexibility for some international travel (around 20-30% of time).
• Have fresh ideas – You don’t accept the status quo, but are interested in solving problems in novel ways. You are able to communicate the impact of those ideas and formulate plans to implement them.

We’re people without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We want to work with the best people, no matter their background. So if you’re passionate about learning new things and keen to join our mission, you’ll fit right in. Also, where and what you studied isn't important to us. If you’ve got great experience, the right skills for the role and you’re great at articulating your thinking, we’d like to hear from you. And because we believe that diverse teams build better products, we’d especially love to hear from you if you’re from an under-represented demographic.