Payments Reconciliations & Safeguarding Officer in Manchester

We’re Suits Me - a fast-growing FinTech business providing innovative financial solutions to our customers. As we continue to expand, we are looking for a Payments Reconciliations and Safeguarding Officer to join our growing finance team. We currently operate under a third-party EMI provider while progressing through our own EMI licence application with the FCA. As we build toward becoming a fully authorised EMI, establishing robust safeguarding, reconciliation processes and operational control frameworks is a key strategic priority.

This role offers the opportunity to join at an important stage in our growth journey and play a hands‑on role in supporting and developing the reconciliation and safeguarding infrastructure that will underpin our future regulated environment.

The Role and what we are looking for:

We are seeking a highly organised and detail-focused Payments Reconciliations & Safeguarding Officer to support the day-to-day reconciliation and safeguarding control environment of the business. You will be naturally detail-oriented, methodical, and comfortable operating in a control-focused environment. You should enjoy working with data, investigating issues through to resolution, and building reliable operational processes.

Initially, the successful candidate will perform a mirrored set of reconciliations alongside our existing third-party EMI provider to validate customer funds, safeguarding balances, transactional activity, and ledger and payment accuracy. This role will evolve into taking ownership of reconciliation and safeguarding processes internally once our EMI licence is in place. This role requires strong data interrogation and investigative capability. The successful candidate must be comfortable independently querying and analysing large transactional datasets to identify, investigate, and resolve reconciliation discrepancies at transaction level.

As the business transitions toward full EMI authorisation, the role will play an important part in developing scalable safeguarding controls, reconciliation governance, and operational assurance processes within a regulated fintech environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform daily safeguarding and transactional reconciliations across customer balances, safeguarding accounts, payment flows, settlement accounts, and internal ledgers.
• Maintain mirrored reconciliation processes against third-party EMI provider outputs to ensure completeness and accuracy.
• Maintain evidence and audit trails for reconciliation investigations and resolutions.
• Investigate, track, and resolve reconciliation breaks and aged reconciling items.
• Perform root cause analysis on reconciliation breaks and control exceptions.
• Escalate material safeguarding or reconciliation risks appropriately.
• Support safeguarding controls in line with FCA expectations for e-money institutions.
• Assist with the development and maintenance of safeguarding methodologies, controls, and operational procedures.
• Ensure reconciliation processes are completed accurately, consistently, and within required timelines.
• Work closely with Finance, Operations, Compliance, and third-party providers to resolve discrepancies and operational issues.
• Support the transition from outsourced EMI operations to internally managed reconciliation and safeguarding processes.
• Contribute to audit readiness, regulatory reporting, and internal control documentation.
• Identify opportunities for automation, process enhancement, and operational efficiencies.
• Support ongoing improvement of reconciliation governance and control frameworks.

Skills & Experience:

• Previous experience in reconciliations, finance operations, payments operations, or a similar control-focused role within fintech, payments, banking or e-money environments.
• Strong understanding of reconciliation principles and investigation processes.
• Strong SQL querying capability and confidence working directly with transactional databases (preferably Snowflake).
• Strong analytical capability across SQL, Excel, and large-scale transactional datasets.
• Ability to independently interrogate large datasets to identify, trace, and resolve reconciliation discrepancies at transaction level.
• Experience reconciling high-volume transactional data across multiple systems and ledgers.
• Excellent attention to detail, strong organisational skills and an ability to independently investigate and resolve discrepancies.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Good communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally.
• Exposure to safeguarding or client money reconciliations.
• Understanding of FCA safeguarding expectations for EMIs or payment firms.
• Experience working with payment processors, banking partners, or reconciliation platforms.
• Exposure to Power BI or reconciliation automation tools.
• Experience supporting regulated financial operations or audit processes.
• Understanding of payment lifecycles including authorisation, settlement, reversals, chargebacks, and safeguarding impacts.

Why Join Us?

• Opportunity to join a scaling fintech/e-money business during a key growth phase.
• Exposure to EMI licensing and FCA-regulated operational build‑out.
• Ability to help shape safeguarding and reconciliation processes from the ground up.
• Collaborative environment with strong long‑term growth potential.
• Meaningful role within a business transitioning to full EMI authorisation.

What’s on offer?

• Hybrid working (Manchester city centre office).
• Death in service, critical illness and income protection cover.
• 30 days holiday per annum plus statutory days.