First Line of Defense – MSPBNA Lending Business Control Unit Executive Director

Morgan Stanley (“MS”) is a global financial services firm that conducts its business through three principal business segments—Institutional Securities, Wealth Management (WM), and Asset Management. WM’s network includes approximately 15,000 Financial Advisors with total client assets of over $5 trillion. WM provides comprehensive financial advice and services to its clients including brokerage, investment advisory, financial and wealth planning, credit and lending, deposits and cash management, annuities, insurance, retirement, and trust services.

Morgan Stanley Private Bank, National Association (“MSPBNA”) provides cash management and lending products and services to serve the needs of WM clients. The US Banks seeks an Executive Director to join the First Line of Defense (1LOD) MSPBNA Lending Business Control Unit (BCU). The candidate will support the operational risk program for the suite of lending products and support cross-product initiatives  across Tailored Lending, Securities Based Lending, Private Share Lending and Residential Mortgage.   

The BCU ED will report to the Head of the MSPBNA Lending BCU Executive Director and will be based in 1 NYP, New York.

Location: 1 NYP, NY

Department: Lending Business Control Unit (BCU)

Reports To: Executive Director, Head of the MSPBNA Lending Business Control Unit

Position Summary:

The Executive Director in the MSPBNA Lending Business Control Unit (BCU) serves as a key member of an embedded risk team within the Lending Businesses. The BCU team generally is responsible for identifying, measuring, monitoring, controlling, and reporting operational risks, while enabling consistent execution of risk management practices across the Banks. This role will fill a need for cross-team programs, organizational activities inclusive of COO functions, committee membership, strategic planning and strategic project execution.  The ED will work closely with the Head of the BCU, the BCU team, business owners, and business risk management to ensure accountability for risks created within their respective lines.  The goal of this position is to strategically organize, lead and drive change to continue to educate and improve on the BCU structure and value.

Key Responsibilities:

• Drive Lending cross-product risk related initiatives to ensure the Lending products are connected to firm-wide or Bank-wide programs, including being able to identify the need for technology and process changes within the products.
• Evolve the BCU engagement model to focus on providing value in risk management work early in the strategic planning and strategic projects lifecycle.
• Enable the team by setting structure and process to successfully partner on new product development activities to identify risks and controls; manage the New Product and Change Management engagement model.
• Enable the team by setting structure and process to proactively identify risk prevention opportunities within the business processes.
• Create a program to create and manage business process flows for lending business processes.
• Evolve the metrics programs to better align and organize cross-product metrics to ensure we are monitoring risks appropriately across our businesses.
• Evolve the execution model across various Operational Risk frameworks in accordance with Firm and US Bank requirements.
    - Issue and incident management
    - New product approval and change management
    - Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSA)
    - Risk assessments and metrics
    - Exam and audit support
    - Control validation
• Build product expertise in Lending products.
• Collaborate with Risk partners (Legal, Compliance, Central Business Risk, 2nd Line Risk Groups) to resolve issues and obtain guidance.
• Manage issue and incident identification, reporting, tracking, documentation, and closure for effective remediation.
• Contribute to the development and refinement of risk governance procedures.
• Produce, review, and manage procedure documents.
• Manage the production of management reporting materials and prepare for monthly risk meetings.

Experience and Knowledge:

• 10+ years in Risk Management and Lending Product Management.
• Proven experience in strategic change management.
• Proven experience in operational risk management within financial services.
• Proven experience in lending products and product management.
• Strong understanding of regulatory frameworks and risk governance.
• Experience with risk assessments and exams (Regulator, Internal Audit, Operational Risk, and Compliance).
• Understanding of RCSA or similar operational risk management frameworks.
• Ability to evaluate processes, identify risks, and design mitigating controls.
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