Head of Operations - Financial Services

About the role

Pennylane is one of the fastest growing Fintechs in France (and soon to be in Europe!) In 5 years of existence, we've managed to : 💻 Make ourselves known as a groundbreaking accounting and financial software for small businesses and their accountants 💰 Raise a total of €400 millions, including from Sequoia, the famous fund from the Silicon Valley who invested early in companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, Paypal and much more... 👨👩👧👦 Grow from 7 cofounders to 1000 happy Pennylaners : we're now recognized as one of the greatest places to work in France (and also remotely), with a 4.6/5 rating on Glassdoor . 🌍 Build an international environment with more than 25 nationalities, with a strong remote-friendly culture, where 30% of the employees are already working from all parts of Europe 🤝 Earn the trust of thousands of customers and accounting firms and obtain outstanding ratings 🚀 Already more than 900,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and over 6000 accounting firms use Pennylane in France! Context We are currently operating approximately 30k business accounts under a BaaS model. The role of Financial Services in Pennylane's strategy is set to grow, both in terms of revenue and product contribution, to serve our 750k+ current customer base. As such, we are initiating a process to get licensed as Etablissement de paiement et Société de financement to meet our current functional scope at the very least. Our ambition is to start onboarding new customers by early 2027 before starting migrating existing customers. To meet this ambition, we are starting to hire our Tech, Product, Compliance and Ops leaders. Reporting directly to the COO, you will be responsible for the application of the company LCB-FT and risk policies on both payment & credit scopes. You will be monitoring and optimizing the performance of the first line of defense, including onboarding, transaction monitoring, fraud & risk. Your mission would be to : Build & lead three teams of analysts (KYB, Transaction monitoring, Risk & Fraud) Deploy LCB-FT policies & control their proper application by your teams Contribute to KYB & TM tooling implementation & team training Optimize the efficiency of your teams and tools, leveraging AI and automating processes while protecting at all cost our risk appetite Work in close collaboration with the Compliance & Fraud & Risk teams of the LoD2 This is a greenfield project with high autonomy and responsibility, direct exposure to regulators, and the opportunity to shape the operations of a fast-growing fintech with a robust pre-existing customer base Responsibilities phasing Phase 1 (pre-licence & migration, 2026-2027) : Work closely with the COO & Strategic Project Manager to support licence application and customer migration from BaaS to EP Focus 100% on payment operations (KYB, TM, Fraud) and building LoD1 infrastructure Phase 2 (post-licence, 2027+) : Progressively integrate credit operations (credit assessment & decisioning) as the Société de Financement scope ramps up Scale LoD1 to support both payment and credit activities across a growing customer base Missions & objectives Operations program Build and scale LoD1 from 30k to 300k+ accounts within 24 months post-licence Recruit, onboard and train 3 operational teams: KYB/KYC L1 (target: 15-20 FTE), Transaction Monitoring L1 (target: 10-15 FTE), Fraud & Risk L1 (target: 5-8 FTE) Define team structures, roles, responsibilities, and career paths aligned with regulatory requirements Establish SLAs and performance frameworks for each team Define collaboration models with Pennylane SAS (agent of Pennylane Financial Services) and with the LoD2 Own the full operational lifecycle: onboarding → transaction monitoring → fraud detection → offboarding Manage budget and forecasting for LoD1 operations (headcount, tools, training) Norms, Policies & Procedures application Deploy and enforce LCB-FT policies defined by translating regulatory obligations into daily operations Ensure 100% compliance with KYB/KYC workflows: customer risk classification, high-risk escalations, PEP screening, sanctions checks Execute transaction monitoring rules as defined by Compliance, escalate L2 alerts to TM L2 within SLA Apply fraud detection policies and manage escalation to Fraud & Risk L2 Challenge policy applicability when operational frict