Onboarding Business Lead (KYC/CDD) in London

At Grant Thornton we do things differently - looking to the future, driving ambitious growth and pioneering positive change in our industry. Providing audit, tax and advisory services, we empower clients through strategic insight, curiosity, and genuine partnership. And we empower our people with real opportunity, an inclusive culture and work life balance.

Grant Thornton UK LLP is part of a global network of independent audit, tax and advisory firms, made up of some 58,000 people in over 135 countries. We’re a team of independent thinkers who put quality, inclusion and integrity first. All around the world we bring a different experience to our clients. A better experience. One that delivers the expertise they need in a way that goes beyond. Personal, proactive, and agile.

You will be part of our Onboarding Client Experience team. This is a newly formed specialist function and we are building it from the ground up, so you will help shape how it works rather than inherit a process. The team supports the firm’s onboarding activity with a particular focus on complex, high-risk and commercially important engagements, making sure Grant Thornton’s professional, ethical and regulatory obligations are met without slowing the business down.

The job, in one line, is to help our engagement leaders go to market safely: to find the route to yes where one safely exists, to be straight about the conditions attached, and to say plainly, with a way forward, when something cannot proceed as proposed.

As an Onboarding Business Lead (KYC/CDD) within our Onboarding Client Experience team, you will act as a trusted risk partner and strategic enabler for the firm. This is not a box-ticking role. It calls for a sophisticated understanding of regulatory requirements, particularly KYC and CDD, alongside contractual and commercial judgement, and the confidence to reach a decision on complex facts.

You will:

• Act as a concierge-style onboarding adviser for our most complex and commercially important cases, owning the case end to end and delivering a frictionless client experience while holding the firm’s risk controls.
• Build early relationships with client-facing Partners and Directors and get into conversations with prospective clients from the outset, so onboarding requirements are anticipated well before formal take-on begins.
• Lead the client outreach process, speaking directly with senior client representatives by phone and video as well as in writing, and apply independent judgement to the sufficiency and credibility of what they give you, including beneficial ownership and, where relevant, source of funds and source of wealth.
• Work through complex ownership structures such as private equity fund stacks, trusts, group engagements and entities in opaque or higher-risk jurisdictions, supporting enhanced due diligence where it is needed, and write clear risk rationales you can defend later to a Partner or a regulator.
• Advise Partners and Directors as a subject matter expert on evidence strategy, risk-based options, connected parties and conflicts, and when to escalate, and turn the recurring themes you see into training, guidance and better ways of working for the wider firm.

Joining us as an Onboarding Business Lead (KYC/CDD), the minimum criteria you’ll need are:

• Substantial hands-on experience of client onboarding, including KYC and CDD, with end-to-end ownership of complex cases.
• Strong working knowledge of UK financial crime obligations, including the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, sanctions, anti-bribery and counter-fraud, and how they apply in practice to onboarding decisions.
• Experience of advising and challenging senior stakeholders who own the client relationship and sit outside your reporting line.
• A confident verbal communicator, comfortable speaking directly with senior client representatives to explain what we need and why.
• A proven ability to write and defend risk rationales, and to reach a decision without perfect information rather than defaulting to inaction.

It would be great if you had some of the following skills, but don’t worry if you don’t tick every box, we’ll help you develop along the way:

• Experience gained in a UK professional services firm or another partnership, where influence matters more than authority.
• The ICA International Diploma in Anti Money Laundering or Financial Crime Prevention, or an equivalent qualification.
• Familiarity with the CCAB’s anti-money laundering guidance for the accountancy sector, the FRC Ethical Standard and the ICAEW Code of Ethics.
• Experience of enhanced due diligence involving politically exposed persons, sanctions screening outcomes or adverse media.
• Experience of improving onboarding processes and of working with onboarding technology and controls to manage, document and govern risk.

As part of our selection process you will be asked to complete a short, timed technical exercise before first-stage interview. It is capped at two hours, it is not a knowledge quiz, and it is designed to show us how you would handle the kind of problem an engagement team brings you on a normal day.

Embracing uniqueness, the culture at Grant Thornton thrives on the contributions of all our people. Building an inclusive culture, where we value difference and respect our colleagues helps our people to perform at the best of their ability and realise their potential.

Life is more than work. The things you do, and the people you’re with outside of work matter, that’s why we’re happy to look at flexible working options for all our roles, and we’ll always do our best to keep your work and life in balance.

The impact you can make here will go far beyond your day job. From secondments, to fundraising for local charities, or investing in entrepreneurs in the developing world, you’ll be giving back to society. It’s that drive to do the right thing that runs through our every move, grounded in our firm’s values – purposefully driven, actively curious and candid but kind.

We’re looking for people who want to contribute, spark fresh ideas and go beyond expectations. People who want to be able to proudly do what’s right, for the firm, our clients, our people and themselves.