Compliance officers in payswix are responsible to assure that all the existing procedures complies with the regulation. The compliance function is one of the most important functions in the company in order to prevent any of the products and services to be misused by the criminals. Today we spoke with payswix Chief Compliance Officer Vita, she told us about her job as well as responsibilities and personal liability risk.
First of all, you have to understand what Compliance Officer does. Compliance consists of three parts: Transaction monitoring team, which is responsible for transaction monitoring both in real-time and retrospectively. Also monitoring team is responsible for Transaction screening against international financial sanctions. If transaction information such as sender name, receiver name, and bank name matches individuals or entities listed in sanctions lists, the transaction is stopped and the investigation to confirm or deny the match. The monitoring team is also responsible for communication and cooperation with local FCIS. This cooperation includes reporting suspicious activities of our customers and providing all possible information about possible fraudulent or illegal activity.
The second part of compliance is the onboarding team. The onboarding process consists of accepting new customers, during which initial information about the customer’s activities, information about management, ultimate beneficial owners, and expectations, services, and partners are collected. During the onboarding, the client’s information about his reputation is collected, this includes adverse media research, and sanctions screening (so that related individuals, main partners, or entity itself is not sanctioned or that they do not try to circumvent those sanctions). The customer risk is also identified during the recording procedure, which might change later depending on various measures.
The third part is the ongoing due diligence or ODD team. This team is responsible for periodic customer reviews. During this process, all initially received information during the onboarding process is updated, including possible changes in ownership structure, activity through payswix expectations, etc. During ODD customers‘ activity through payswix services is evaluated and customers‘ risk re-assessed.
The Chief Compliance officer‘s daily routine contains various tasks which include such tasks as quarterly reports for the management board, consultations for all three teams regarding specific issues, Supervision of enterprise-wide risk assessment, cooperation with the Bank of Lithuania, external audits, creation and updates of policies and procedures, process improvements, communication with existing and potential partners, ensuring that processes comply with legal acts, trainings, control of QA – quality assurance process and etc. Previously mentioned QA process helps CCO to understand the weaknesses of the processes and to oversee what updates and improvements are needed.
Can you tell about your experience as a Compliance Officer at payswix?
I came to this job as a simple Compliance Officer, then soon I got promoted to the position of Senior Risk Policy Officer and was fully responsible for the audit conducted by the Bank of Lithuania. After some time I got promoted to the MLRO position which was challenging and full of new things I had to learn for this position. After a year in MLRO position, I was promoted to CCO. I will be honest, it was scary in the beginning to accept this position. For now, I can say that the work is really responsible and challenging. You have to have a very broad vision because you have to look at each situation from different angles, not only from the compliance but also from the business side. You have to find a balance here. There is a lot of tension at work because there are always exceptional works. Anyway, the job of a CCO is very interesting, because every day you have to learn something, and also have the opportunity to see the work in the company from all different angles. It is very encouraging to know that you are very beneficial to the company and bring great added value. I get to improve not only in my field but also in team management and etc.
You need to be psychologically strong in this role because there is a lot of pressure. You have to be able to plan your time because the workload is high and the time sometimes seems to be very short. The most important thing is to plan your own and others’ time. Because when you work in a team, you have to not only plan the work for yourself but also entrust it to someone else. You have to trust the people you work with and allow them to learn and grow together with you.
The team management part is very important in this job, not to mention the processes themselves. The people you work with make it a lot easier. And the work really gets easier and more exciting when you start trusting people. One big benefit is people’s trust, which you have to earn for yourself. This helps to avoid both conflicts and misunderstandings at work. The second benefit is continuous improvement. Because every job is very different, having a great team will always be the most important thing in the workplace.
