Financial Crime Investigator in Newcastle

We have an exciting opportunity to join us as a Financial Crime Investigator, supporting the launch of a new telephony-based Financial Crime team within the 1st Line. In this role, you’ll take ownership of escalated cases to assess financial crime risk and drive the right outcomes. You’ll be responsible for handling escalations and contacting customers directly to obtain key information and complete due diligence, ensuring decisions are accurate, risk-focused and aligned to policy requirements. This is a hands-on role where you’ll balance investigative work with customer interaction in a fast-paced, telephony-driven environment. You’ll play an important role in embedding how the new team operates, bringing a keen eye for detail and strong communication skills to support effective decision making.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job you'll be located at our nearest regional office or hub. There will be a need to regularly connect with colleagues for collaboration and in some locations you’ll be expected to spend at least two days a week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, in the office.

Responsibilities:

• You will be responsible for carrying out thorough due diligence and customer verification on medium and high-risk customers, ensuring risks are accurately assessed and clearly documented.
• The role involves independently completing periodic reviews, managing escalations by engaging directly with customers to gather and clarify information, and maintaining professional, well-recorded interactions that support robust risk decisions.
• You will conduct detailed investigations into sanctions, politically exposed persons and anti-money laundering alerts, including analysing financial activity, adverse media findings and sources of wealth or funds to assess potential risks to the business.
• Working closely with financial crime specialists, you will provide guidance to colleagues, contribute to strengthening controls, and highlight emerging risks or trends.
• The position also includes identifying and escalating suspicious activity, reviewing high-risk jurisdiction cases, and responding to legal and law enforcement requests in line with regulatory requirements and strict timelines, including representing the organisation in court where required.

About you:

• Experience working in a telephony or contact centre environment, including handling inbound/outbound calls and managing customer interactions effectively.
• Experience of working within a financial crime environment.
• Knowledge of Customer Risk Assessments, Client Screening, Payment Filtering, Transaction Monitoring or an AML role.
• A keen eye for detail and be able to present your findings/thoughts on investigations in a clear and concise manner.
• The ability to analyse detailed information and be able to draw sophisticated conclusions and/or recommendations from the facts/data provided.
• The ability to work autonomously with excellent time management skills.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Microsoft Office and Excel knowledge.

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role:

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind.
• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand.
• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development.
• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes.

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.

The extras you’ll get:

• 25 days holiday, pro rata.
• Access to private medical insurance.
• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement.
• Access to an annual performance-related bonus.
• Training and development to help you progress your career.
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death.
• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year.

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. Once we’ve received your application successfully, we will invite you to the first stage; our online assessments! Within a few hours you’ll receive a link to your unique candidate hub – here we’ll ask you to complete some online assessments within 48 hours of applying; these include a situational judgement test, checking and numerical assessments – all focussed around what’s important to us in a member facing role at Nationwide.

We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.