Group Regulatory Affairs Lead

Job description

As a Regulatory Affairs Lead, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing a new global capability within the Group Core Compliance function. Today, Wise holds over 80 regulatory licences across the UK, Europe, North America, APAC, MEA and LATAM. To sustain our global growth and further elevate our regulatory relationship management, we are establishing a dedicated, centralized Regulatory Affairs function. Reporting to the Director of Group Core Compliance, you will serve as the single source of truth for the status and strategic trajectory of our regulatory relationships globally.

You will work closely with regional Compliance Officers, Risk, Legal, Government Relations and Banking & Expansion teams to establish a centralized view of our global regulatory priorities, providing clear visibility into how these are managed across markets and proactively identifying and resolving any resulting intra-group conflicts or competing interests. We are looking for a strong stakeholder manager and problem solver who thrives on turning ambiguity into scalable structure.

You will bridge the gap between regional Compliance Officers, Group executive leadership, and functional partners (Legal, Risk, Banking & Expansion, Government Relations, Product), ensuring Wise engages with supervisors around the world with one aligned and proactive voice.

Your Mission

Global Relationship Oversight: Establish enterprise-wide visibility over Wise’s supervisory footprint. Maintain a real-time overview of regional regulatory owners, active supervisory touchpoints, open inquiries, inspections, and regulatory commitments (including remediations) across all operating entities.

Regulatory Relationship Strategy

In collaboration with regional Compliance Officers and functional partners, anticipate supervisory shifts, thematic review trends, and administrative changes in key markets. Help leadership formulate proactive engagement strategies before risks materialize.

Regulatory Information Governance

Own the framework for tracking all material regulatory correspondence, bilateral engagements, information requests (RFIs), and regulatory notifications. Eliminate regional blind spots to ensure Wise speaks to supervisors globally with a unified narrative. Translate complex initiatives into clear, consistent external regulatory communications.

Executive Strategic Reporting

Design data-driven systems that will produce Management Information (MI) for the Director of Group Compliance, executive leadership, Boards and Risk Committees. Strategic reporting will clearly articulate relationship health, emerging issues, and supervisory trends. Translate complex regulatory interactions into actionable reports and advice that can be used to make decisions quickly.

Supervisory Read-Across & Lessons Learned

Partner with regional Compliance Officers and Product Compliance to evaluate material supervisory inquiries, examination findings, and enforcement precedents across jurisdictions. Ensure critical lessons learned are systematically cascaded to protect parallel licenses.

Cross-Functional Information Sharing

Drive the agenda and operational cadence for cross-functional information sharing to align on high-impact supervisory developments, market intelligence, and collective remediation without duplicating formal committee governance - exercising strict discretion around confidential topics.

Incident Response

Act as an advisor for Core Compliance during complex, regulatory incidents, ensuring aligned briefing for regional Compliance Officers, prompt factual verification, and coordinated global regulatory messaging across impacted jurisdictions.

This role will give you the opportunity to: Build a function: Take a developing concept and design the global operating model, engagement standards, and data from scratch.

Influence executive strategy

Shape how leadership and regional Compliance Officers navigate key regulatory engagements and evolving multi-supervisor coalitions.

Gain unmatched global breadth

Work across a diverse regulatory landscape - collaborating daily with teams across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, LATAM and MEA.

Champion a data-driven approach

Move regulatory relations beyond traditional narrative memos by embedding quantitative metrics and structured trend analytics into our supervisory governance.

A bit about you

Proven Track Record: Significant experience (10+ years) in Regulatory Affairs and Relations or Compliance within a financial institution or regulatory authority.

Supervisory Expertise

In-depth understanding of how regulators operate, examine, and communicate. Proven track record managing complex regulatory interactions, audits, thematic inquiries, and executive briefing processes.

Strategic Thinker

You can connect the dots and build systems. You have experience implementing structured tracking mechanisms, reporting cycles, and relationship management frameworks across multi-entity, cross-border corporate structures.

Executive Presence & Influence

High emotional intelligence with outstanding written and verbal communication skills. You can distill voluminous, ambiguous regulatory dialogue into succinct executive summaries and comfortably challenge senior stakeholders on regulatory risk.

Autonomous

You’re comfortable with ambiguity and have a clear bias for action. You can take high-level objectives, work with the Director of Group Core Compliance to define your own milestones, and build collaborative alliances across separate teams.