We are seeking a strategic and operationally-led AVP of Enterprise Risk & Regulatory Compliance. This high-impact role is responsible for the end-to-end merchant lifecycle-from high-integrity onboarding and precise MCC categorization to continuous risk profiling and ecosystem stability. You will lead the design and execution of merchant risk assessment frameworks, balancing aggressive business growth with robust mitigation by leveraging automated workflows and data-driven underwriting policies.

The ideal candidate will be a "risk-aware" growth enabler, capable of managing complex regulatory requirements while building scalable, friction-less onboarding journeys for diverse merchant archetypes.

Key Responsibilities

1. Enterprise Risk & Regulatory Compliance

- Framework Governance: Design and maintain an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework that ensures strict alignment with card network rules and local regulatory standards.

- RBI & Statutory Compliance: Lead the organization's adherence to RBI regulatory frameworks (such as PA/PG guidelines), ensuring all merchant operations align with the latest central bank mandates and statutory requirements.

- 360-Degree Compliance Perspective: Oversee the compliance function from a holistic Payment Gateway perspective, managing the intersection of merchant risk, platform integrity, and banking partner requirements.

- KYC/KYB Governance: Own the end-to-end KYC/KYB compliance process, ensuring deep due diligence on financial health and beneficial ownership transparency

- Regulatory Reporting: Act as the internal authority on statutory compliance, ensuring all anti-money laundering (AML), countering the financing of terrorism (CFT), and data localization requirements are executed flawlessly.

- Periodic Reviews: Implement automated re-KYC and periodic review cycles to ensure the merchant portfolio remains compliant over time.

- Audit & Documentation: Create underwriting playbooks, solution narratives, and internal policy documentation for the risk operations team.

2. Strategic Merchant Underwriting & Onboarding

- Automated Engines: Design and build automated underwriting engines that integrate checks-such as velocity limits and credit scrubbing-directly into the onboarding API.

- Vertical Specialization: Identify and define risk parameters for specific sectors, creating vertical-focused risk triggers for high-frequency or high-risk sectors like Insurance, Fuel, and Mobility.

- Underwriting Operations: Manage the Underwriting Operations (UnderOps) team to handle manual reviews, site visits, and complex merchant escalations.

- Policy Collaboration: Define vertical-wise risk appetite and underwriting guidelines in collaboration with Sales and Partnerships teams.

3. Ecosystem Risk & Settlement Logic

- Financial Exposure: Establish credit-limit frameworks for merchants to ensure exposure is aligned with financial standing and industry norms.

- Settlement Execution: Drive operational execution for settlement logic, including the hands-on management of rolling reserves, delayed payouts, and escrow requirements.

- Ecosystem Growth: Enable partner-led distribution models (embedded or white-label) by creating frameworks for TSPs and ISVs to manage sub-merchant underwriting.

- Portfolio Health: Own revenue-related risk targets, balancing high approval rates against potential losses and chargeback exposure.

4. Scale & Optimization

- Scalable Templates: Build repeatable underwriting templates that can be scaled across multiple partners and diverse industry verticals.

- Operational Flow: Optimize operational flows, streamlining the transition from initial application to final settlement and exception handling.

- Competitive Benchmarking: Track vertical-specific competitors and niche risk providers to ensure the underwriting stack remains cutting-edge.

Qualifications

- Experience: 5-8 years of experience in Risk Management, Underwriting, or Platform roles within Fintech, Payments, or SaaS.

- Operational Expertise: Direct exposure to the operational side of merchant underwriting, including financial statement analysis and fraud detection.

- Industry Knowledge: Familiarity with industry-specific risk in Insurance, Fuel, Utilities, or similar high-volume sectors.

- Growth Mindset: Experience working with partnerships and ecosystem-led growth models.

- Education: Graduation or Post-Graduation from premier institutes.

- Technical Acumen: Ability to work closely with Product and Engineering to integrate risk checks into technical infrastructure.