Head of Preliminary Fraud Investigations

Lead the Future of Financial Crime Prevention

A high-growth digital financial services company is seeking an experienced Head of Fraud Investigations to lead a critical function at the forefront of fraud detection, investigation, and prevention.

This is a leadership opportunity for a fraud risk professional who thrives in fast-paced environments and is passionate about protecting customers, strengthening controls, and driving operational excellence. You will lead investigation teams, shape fraud prevention strategies, influence product and technology decisions, and ensure the organisation remains ahead of emerging threats and regulatory developments.

What You Will Do: 

As the leader of the fraud investigations function, you will:

• Lead, mentor, and develop high-performing fraud investigation and monitoring teams.
• Define operational metrics, performance benchmarks, and investigative standards to drive continuous improvement.
• Optimise workflows to reduce false positives and false negatives while improving case resolution times.
• Analyse fraud trends and deliver actionable insights that strengthen detection and prevention capabilities.
• Identify process enhancement opportunities that improve investigator productivity and operational effectiveness.
• Partner closely with analytics, data science, product, technology, risk, and compliance teams to enhance fraud controls and monitoring frameworks.
• Ensure fraud investigation processes remain aligned with evolving regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
• Act as a key stakeholder in managing complex or high-risk investigations, including collaboration with legal and external authorities when required.
• Present recommendations and strategic insights to senior leadership to prevent future fraud incidents.
• Oversee fraud monitoring operations across multiple payment and financial services channels.
• Lead investigations relating to account compromise, identity abuse, transaction fraud, collusion schemes, payment fraud, and emerging fraud typologies.
• Drive quality assurance programmes to ensure consistency, accuracy, and adherence to investigation standards.
• Ensure operational readiness, tooling effectiveness, and policy governance across fraud operations.
• Oversee round-the-clock fraud monitoring capabilities and ensure adherence to internal and regulatory service standards.

What You Need to Succeed:

Required Experience

• Proven experience in fraud investigations, financial crime risk management, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated success leading and developing fraud, financial crime, AML, or risk operations teams.
• Deep expertise across the end-to-end fraud investigation lifecycle, from detection through resolution.
• Strong understanding of fraud typologies, transaction monitoring, investigative methodologies, and fraud prevention frameworks.
• Experience working within financial services, fintech, banking, payments, or other highly regulated environments.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate complex findings to executive audiences.
• Strong knowledge of relevant regulatory requirements, including fraud risk management, AML, KYC, and data privacy obligations.
• Proven ability to manage multiple priorities while maintaining high-quality documentation and governance standards.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience leading both fraud monitoring and investigation functions.
• Exposure to payment ecosystems, digital financial products, or large-scale transaction environments.
• Experience partnering with analytics, product, and technology teams to improve fraud controls through data-driven decision making.
• Background working with law enforcement, regulators, or legal teams on significant fraud cases.