Fraud Strategy Lead - iwocaPay in London

We’re looking for a Fraud Strategy Lead. You’ll own the fraud strategy agenda for a B2B payment product that is changing how it delivers digital trade credit. You will design transaction profiling strategies, monitor automated fraud models, and give a small team the direction and context to act on what the data tells us.

The company: Small businesses move fast. Opportunities often don’t wait, and cash flow pressures can appear overnight. To keep going, and growing, SMEs need finance that’s as flexible and responsive as they are. That’s why we built iwoca. Our smart technology, data science and five-star customer service ensures business owners can act with the speed, confidence and control they need, exactly when it’s needed. We’ve already cleared the way for 100,000 businesses with more than £4 billion in funding. Our passionate team is driven to help even more SMEs succeed, through access to better finance and other services that make running a business easier. Our ultimate mission is to support one million SMEs in their defining moments, creating lasting impact for the communities and economies they drive.

The team: iwocaPay is iwoca’s B2B payment product. It lets business buyers pay on trade credit terms while sellers receive payment upfront. The risk squad manages the loss exposure that sits beneath that model: credit risk, fraud and financial crime, disputes, and payment operation failures such as chargebacks. At the moment, the squad runs largely on operational controls. That works, but it means the analytical and operational sides of risk function independently of each other. We are building the capacity to change that – better predictive analytics, a consistent monitoring framework, and an overarching risk strategy. The squad sits within iwocaPay but works closely with iwoca’s Risk Modelling team and the broader technical and data science functions.

The role: As Fraud Strategy Lead, you’ll shape how the fraud function is built. The squad currently runs on effective operational controls, but it means the analytical and operational sides work independently of each other. Your challenge is to close that gap: designing transaction profiling strategies, establishing real-time automated decisioning, and defining risk appetite to keep the B2B checkout experience seamless while loss rates stay inside tolerance. You’ll set modelling priorities and evaluate automated fraud models alongside embedded data scientists, rather than building from scratch yourself. You’ll guide Risk Analysts and work across product and engineering to turn analytical trade-offs into commercial decisions others can act on. Credit policy, model governance, seller counterparty risk – you’ll build up the frameworks for a new invoice finance product. You’ll define the standards, judge whether the models meet them, and present a forward-looking strategy that tells Co‑Leads and wider leadership what to sequence next. The decisions you make will shape loss rates, approval volumes, and the pace at which a new product scales.

The requirements:

• Essential:
• Portfolio ownership: You have managed or materially contributed to a credit portfolio of £10 million or more, with accountability for fraud and/or credit loss performance against a defined risk appetite.
• Experience delivering fraud strategy in a digital lending, fintech, or payments context, focusing on transaction profiling over manual reviews.
• Experience with B2B‑specific fraud typologies, such as buyer impersonation, fictitious invoices, or merchant collusion.
• Experience managing fraud loss rates against high‑velocity transaction volumes, balancing fraud prevention with customer friction to achieve high straight‑through approval rates.
• Ability to monitor and evaluate automated fraud models, assessing feature quality and guiding data scientists without necessarily needing to build models yourself.
• Ability to collaborate across engineering, data science, and product, translating fraud trade‑offs into commercial decisions that non‑specialists can act on.
• Background in mathematics, statistics, economics, or a related quantitative discipline, allowing you to challenge, tune, and evolve risk frameworks.
• Uses AI tools to support analysis and decision making, applying strong judgement to ensure accuracy, risk awareness, and sound outcomes.
• Bonus:
• Experience at a B2B pay‑later or trade credit business.
• Experience assessing seller counterparty risk or merchant risk in a payments or embedded finance context.
• Experience building or scaling a risk function during a period of significant product change or volume growth.

The salary: We expect to pay from £110,000 – £130,000 for this role. But, we’re open‑minded, so definitely include your salary goals with your application. We routinely benchmark salaries against market rates, and run quarterly performance and salary reviews.

The culture: At iwoca, the best idea wins. We model our culture on independent thinking, challenging untested logic, and evidence‑based decisions. We prioritise learning and growth, and give people the autonomy to develop in the direction that makes them most effective. We are a tech company, and we use AI where it helps us work faster or better. We expect people to look for useful applications, test them in practice, and use good judgment about when and how to rely on AI.

The offices: We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a great place to work: Offices in London, Leeds, Berlin, and Frankfurt with plenty of drinks and snacks. Events and community‑led groups, including running groups, padel, and monthly ping‑pong and pool competitions.

The benefits: Flexible working hours. Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership. A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents. 25 days’ holiday per year, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave. A one‑month, fully paid sabbatical after four years. Instant access to external counselling and therapy sessions for team members that need emotional or mental health support. 3% Pension contributions on total earnings. An employee equity incentive scheme. Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money. Electric car scheme and cycle to work scheme. Two company retreats a year: we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield. And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer: A learning and development budget for everyone. Company‑wide talks with internal and external speakers. Access to learning platforms like Treehouse.