Senior Financial Crime Investigator

As a Senior Financial Crime Investigator, you will play a critical role in protecting the organisation and its customers from fraud and financial crime risks. Acting as a subject matter expert in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and fraud prevention, you will lead complex investigations, provide specialist guidance, and act as a key escalation point for Financial Crime Investigators and wider business stakeholders. The role will also involve taking escalation calls ensuring they are dealt with in a competent and timely manner.

You will be responsible for investigating transaction monitoring alerts, suspicious activity referrals, and high-risk customer cases across a range of retail and corporate products. This includes conducting detailed Customer Due Diligence (CDD), Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), and Know Your Customer (KYC) assessments, analysing transactional behaviour, and identifying potential financial crime risks. A core part of the role involves producing high-quality rationale and ensuring decisions are accurate, consistent, and compliant with regulatory requirements.

You will also prepare and quality check Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), including Defence Against Money Laundering (DAML) submissions, and manage ongoing stakeholder communication during investigations. In addition, you will review sanctions and Politically Exposed Person (PEP) screening escalations, as well as payment filtering alerts, ensuring appropriate escalation to senior management or second-line risk where required.

Working closely with Financial Crime Operations leadership and second-line teams, you will help strengthen controls, identify emerging trends, and contribute to system and process improvements. You will play an active role in quality assurance activities, coaching colleagues, and sharing best practice to drive high performance and consistency across the team.

Alongside investigative responsibilities, you will support the delivery of management information (MI), contribute to risk and control self-assessment (RCSA) processes, and ensure adherence to regulatory and internal policy standards. You will also collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders, including operational teams and relationship managers, to support effective customer outcomes.

This role offers the opportunity to combine technical expertise with leadership and stakeholder engagement, contributing to a robust financial crime framework while enhancing the overall customer experience.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this role, you'll be based at your nearest regional office or hub. We value time spent together to connect with colleagues for collaboration so there will be a regular requirement to attend our Gosforth site approximately once per week. If you are based at an office location, you'll be expected to meet our hybrid working requirement of at least two days a week, or 40% of your working time if part-time, in the office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works.

Virgin Money is now part of Nationwide

Nationwide acquired Virgin Money in October 2024. Virgin Money continues to serve customers on the high street, and there will be a phased and considered integration over the coming years.

You’ll be employed by Nationwide from day one, delivering real impact and benefitting from a highly competitive range of benefits. We’re a workplace where you’re rewarded, recognised and celebrated.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.