Executive Director, Digital Assets Risk(UAE, Hong Kong)

This pivotal Executive Director role, based in either the UAE or Hong Kong, invites an accomplished professional to serve as a second-line Subject Matter Expert specializing in Digital Assets (DA) within the financial services domain. This position offers an extraordinary opportunity to shape the Group's risk posture amidst evolving digital asset landscapes, including cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based tokens, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and other innovative fintech solutions.

The successful candidate will be a strategic and thought-leading expert, responsible for advising across multiple risk dimensions including reputational, traded/market, treasury/capital, liquidity, operational, technology, cyber security, and credit risks linked to digital assets. The role demands leadership in enhancing the DA Risk Management Approach (DARMA), ensuring a robust framework and control environment are consistently aligned with the dynamic regulatory and technological developments.

Key activities include leading comprehensive assessments of material risks arising from direct or indirect exposure to digital assets, overseeing the effectiveness of risk management controls and governance, and promoting compliance with regulatory expectations while supporting innovation. The role requires close collaboration with business units, risk framework owners, and the Group Chief Risk Officer to ensure the Group's risk appetite and policies appropriately reflect the emerging DA risk landscape.

The position prescribes rigorous oversight of risk frameworks, policy adaptation, training provisions, and risk appetite monitoring across relevant risk types. Furthermore, it involves leading regulatory interpretation for significant frameworks categorized as “Large-Scale”, liaising with international supervisory bodies, and assisting country-level compliance measures.

This role is an exceptional opportunity for an individual with deep expertise in digital asset technologies and financial risk management to influence and safeguard a global banking institution's venture into transformative digital finance initiatives.

Strategic Leadership:

• Shape and influence the Group's Digital Assets (DA) strategic agenda, aligning risk frameworks, policies, and appetites with evolving digital finance innovations.
• Engage proactively with industry pioneers and thought leaders to stay at the forefront of DA risk trends, promoting adoption of progressive risk assessment models and data analytics techniques.
• Lead detailed regulatory analysis and interpretation to ensure projects and products involving digital assets comply fully with legal and regulatory boundaries globally.
• Provide expert risk evaluation for blockchain technology initiatives, tokenomics strategies, and DA investments, ensuring comprehensive risk mitigation and alignment with the Group’s risk tolerance.

Business Partnership and Advisory:

• Define and direct the collective objectives of the DA Risk Management Approach, integrating feedback from various risk and business stakeholders.
• Champion understanding and adherence to digital asset risk parameters among business units, particularly where client engagements have extensive DA exposure.
• Advise the business on embedding DA risk considerations within strategic planning and operational execution.
• Coordinate with treasury and stress testing teams to embed DA-specific scenarios, enhancing resilience assessments.
• Deliver timely, informed, and critical advice to ensure proactive adherence to compliance and risk mitigation strategies.

Governance and Process Excellence:

• Serve as the Policy Owner within the DA risk management framework, ensuring rigorous control over processes and compliance with established governance principles.
• Document, review and refine DA risk processes regularly, maintaining a complete and transparent process inventory.
• Lead ongoing challenge and oversight of DA risk profiles, engaging with process owners to ensure accurate risk oversight.

• Extensive expertise in traded risk management, digital asset markets, and credit risk assessments.
• In-depth operational and cybersecurity risk knowledge specific to digital asset platforms and fintech environments.
• Strong reputational risk management skills, with a focus on safeguarding organizational integrity and stakeholder trust.
• Comprehensive understanding of compliance and regulatory landscapes influencing digital asset operations across multiple jurisdictions.
• Robust treasury experience enabling evaluation of capital, liquidity, and funding risks associated with digital assets.
• Proven ability to synthesize complex risk data and communicate findings effectively to senior leadership and regulatory bodies.

• A strong academic foundation pertinent to banking, finance, information technology, or related disciplines.
• Experienced within banking and financial services, covering capital, liquidity, traded, and credit risk management.
• Experienced in involvement with emerging digital technologies, demonstrating the ability to navigate fast-evolving landscapes.
• Hands-on experience in Digital Asset technologies, ideally within a Digital Asset Service Provider environment.
• Deep, practical expertise evaluating both financial and non-financial risks related to blockchains, tokens, CBDCs, stablecoins, and cryptocurrencies.
• Clear and current understanding of emerging and novel DA risks across multiple risk domains such as reputational, technology, operational, and credit risks.
• Diverse experience spanning banking and Fintech business models, enabling agile risk adaptation.
• Demonstrated proficiency in risk management governance, frameworks, and board-level communication.
• Recognized thought leader in digital-related risk areas, encompassing technology risk, ICS risk, and operational resilience.
• Strong awareness of digital-assets and fintech industry evolution, regulatory implications, and their impact on the financial sector.
• Direct or close collaboration with regulators, demonstrating familiarity with supervisory frameworks.
• Exceptional stakeholder management, communication prowess, and influencing capabilities.
• Multicultural sensitivity and superior interpersonal skills essential for global teamwork.
• Experience in programme and project management, including senior committee paper writing.
• Creativity paired with a continuous improvement mindset to innovate risk practices.

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.