Sr. Director, Risk Management

About Blackhawk Network

Today, through BHN’s single global platform, businesses of all kinds can tap into the world’s largest network of branded payment solutions. BHN helps businesses grow revenue, increase loyalty, motivate and reward their teams, disburse funds and engage consumers. Branded payment solutions include the issuance and distribution of gift cards, egifts, corporate payouts and rewards, along with the technology to deliver these products in seamless, integrated ways. BHN’s network spans the globe with more than 400,000 consumer touchpoints. Learn more at BHN.com.

Overview

The role reports to the Vice President of Risk Management. The role will be a key player in Blackhawk Network’s continued growth and global expansion. The company is looking for this leader to centralize the Risk function and build out a proactive, robust, best practices function centered around payments and fraud risk. S/he will be entrusted with a broad portfolio of risk management responsibilities, including risk governance, fraud payments risk, cyber risk, investigations, and operational risk. The Director of Risk will develop operational frameworks to support fraud and payment risk payment strategies, policies and programs to enhance risk management, prevent and mitigate losses. S/he will drive a differentiated approach to risk management using data, ML, AI and other decision science to prevent and mitigate fraud payment losses while ensuring customer experiences are minimally impacted. 

The Director of Risk Management will collaborate with technology, product and customer service teams to ensure the integrity of the payments ecosystem by preventing and mitigating fraud losses, overseeing fraud investigations, and preventing the misuse of payments systems for unlawful or abusive purposes and protecting against overall financial loss. Developing and managing a world class team will also be a key aspect of this role. 

Responsibilities

• Risk Management Operational Strategy: Design a holistic approach to manage company-wide risk from an operational and enterprise perspective. Create operational strategies and reporting processes to achieve tactical and strategic objectives to detect and prevent losses associated with fraudulent and high-risk transactions.
• Risk policies: Support and enhance the enterprise risk management policy and risk policies for all key risk categories (regulatory, legal, compliance, cyber risk, investigations, and operational risk).
• Risk processes: Ensure that effective processes are in place for the identification, measurement, management, monitoring and reporting of significant current and emerging risks, both at an aggregated and disaggregated level.
• Risk governance: Update the operating model with a clear delineation of responsibilities across the organization regarding the operation of the enterprise risk management framework. Provide advice to the VP of Risk Management on risk governance matters.
• Risk infrastructure: Evaluate the current risk systems, centralize and build the appropriate risk systems required to support the execution of risk processes, as well as equip the global risk function with adequate resources.
• Risk culture: Share applicable best practices and create a consistent awareness of risk at all levels of the Blackhawk organization.
• Team: Build a world class risk management team. This individual will be responsible for evaluating, coaching, driving and hiring top talent to make his/her vision a reality.

Qualifications

The successful candidate will have a distinguished record of leading and developing a risk management function, having worked at a respected financial institution (where s/he has had exposure to payments and technology platforms), a fintech company, and/or a best-in-class, technology-driven e-commerce platform. S/he will have implemented and operationalized an enterprise risk management function to world-class standards. S/he will be able to identify critical risk management issues and opportunities, and ensure the necessary experience, specialized technical capability, access to resources, and independent authority are in place to advance Blackhawk’s risk management agenda – in support of the company’s business plans, performance, and reputation. 

In particular, s/he will have: 

• A comprehensive understanding of the payments landscape as it relates to regulatory, legal, compliance, risk governance, cyber risk, audit, investigations, and operational risk
• Strong commercial and technology orientation
• An operational and growth-oriented approach with a strong bias for action
• A balanced and pragmatic risk-reward perspective that allows for effective partnership with senior management in achieving business goals
• An ability to implement risk management strategies on a comp