Sanctions Specialist

Mercury is building a complete finance stack for startups. We work hard to create the easiest and safest banking* experience possible to simplify entrepreneurs' and business owners’ financial lives. The challenge is to do so while ensuring we protect Mercury, customers, and the broader financial ecosystem from sanctions violations and potential reputational risks.

Our Sanctions Program is crucial in this mission and is responsible for monitoring, investigating, and mitigating sanctions risks. This team is growing, and we're looking to hire a Sanctions Specialist to support our efforts in watchlist screening, transaction monitoring, and managing alerts for politically exposed persons (PEPs) and adverse media. As a member of the Sanctions team, you’ll help handle our sanctions-related queues while balancing an eagle eye for risk with excellent user experience.

You’ll start conducting thorough screening investigations and escalating issues to the appropriate teams when necessary. You will be responsible for reviewing onboarding and ongoing monitoring alerts, with minimal impact on applicants and customers, while safeguarding Mercury from potential sanctions violations and reputational risk. You’ll report directly to the Sr. Sanctions Manager and will be supported by a highly functional Risk team.

*Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust®; Members FDIC.

As part of the journey, we would expect you to:

• Minimize Mercury’s sanctions exposure and reputational risk through the review and adjudication of sanctions, PEP, and Adverse Media alerts
• Escalate potentially suspicious and/or fraudulent activity to the AML Investigations or Fraud Teams for further review 
• Respond to sanctions support requests in the mailbox and Slack channels
• Document rationale for alert decisions with supporting documentation
• Identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary volumes through false positive rule proposals
• Remain up to date on sanctions regulations and procedures
• Maintain a positive customer experience while mitigating any potential risk to Mercury 

Some things that might make you successful in a role like this:

• Have experience or academic knowledge of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), foreign sanctions such as EU/UN, PEP, Adverse Media, and other AML Watch List types
• Have some product sense and knowledge of banking products such as ACH, International Wires, SWIFT, checks, and debit cards
• Be a highly motivated self-starter, comfortable working within a high-risk environment under minimal supervision
• Be accountable for the accuracy of information gathered while maintaining quality control standards
• Write with clarity and purpose
• Manage relationships with external parties with confidence and kindness 
• Love problem solving and making teams, products, and processes more efficient
• Experience with LexisNexis Bridger and Firco Continuity preferred

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options), and benefits.

Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

• US employees in the New York City or San Francisco Bay Area: $90,900 - $106,900 USD
• US employees outside of the New York City or San Francisco Bay Area: $81,800 - $96,200 USD
• Canadian employees (any location): CAD 82,700 - 97,300.

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024. Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here.

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