Lead Customer Onboarding

At Mukuru, onboarding is more than getting a customer through the door. It is about creating a fast, secure and trusted first experience, while protecting customers and the business from financial crime and fraud.

We’re looking for an experienced Lead: Customer Onboarding to take ownership of our end-to-end onboarding and identity operations. You’ll bring together Compliance Operations, Number Change and Verifications, while helping us build a digital-first, risk-based onboarding experience across multiple markets and products.

This is a role for someone who understands the balance between customer experience, regulation, risk, technology and growth.

• Define and deliver the customer onboarding strategy and target operating model.
• Build scalable, digital-first onboarding processes.
• Drive automation and straight-through processing to reduce unnecessary manual intervention.
• Help create onboarding journeys that support growth while maintaining strong controls.

• Oversee KYC, CDD and EDD within a risk-based framework.
• Strengthen digital identity and document verification across customer channels.
• Oversee sanctions, PEP and adverse media screening.
• Strengthen controls against identity fraud, document fraud, SIM-swap and account takeover.
• Partner with Financial Crime, AML, Fraud Risk and Compliance on escalations and controls.

• Partner with Product and Engineering to automate onboarding processes.
• Support business requirements and UAT for onboarding, case-management and screening tools.
• Manage identity verification, biometrics, screening and data vendors.
• Explore capabilities such as AI-assisted document review where they add value.

You’ll track and use insights across areas including:

• Customer onboarding conversion and drop-off
• Auto-approval rates
• Turnaround times and backlogs
• Quality accuracy
• False-positive rates
• Fraud losses
• Cost per verification

You’ll turn this information into meaningful insights that help leadership improve performance, manage risk and identify opportunities.

You’ll lead the Team Leaders responsible for Compliance Ops, Number Change and Verifications, building capability and encouraging accountability, quality and continuous improvement. You’ll also oversee workforce planning, capacity modelling, rostering and cross-skilling across the teams.

• Bachelor’s degree in Commerce, Law, Risk Management, Compliance, Business or a related field.
• A postgraduate qualification in Compliance, Financial Crime or Risk Management would be advantageous.

We’re looking for someone with:

• 8 years in KYC/CDD, customer onboarding or financial crime operations within banking, fintech, payments or remittances.
• 3–5 years leading multi-team operations through Team Leaders or managers in a high-volume regulated environment.
• 3 years in digital/remote onboarding and identity verification at scale.
• 3 years working with sanctions/PEP screening, fraud prevention or account-takeover controls.
• 2 years leading process automation, systems implementation or operating-model change.

Experience working across multiple jurisdictions, particularly African markets and/or the UK, and experience managing regulatory inspections, audits and remediation programmes are listed as desirable.

Recognised qualifications such as CAMS (ACAMS), the ICA Diploma in AML or Financial Crime Compliance, or a Compliance Institute Southern Africa credential are desirable, as is process-improvement certification such as Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.

You’ll bring strong knowledge across:

• AML/CFT and risk-based KYC, CDD and EDD
• FATF standards, the FIC Act and UK Money Laundering Regulations
• Digital identity verification, biometrics and liveness
• Sanctions, PEP and adverse media screening
• Fraud prevention and account-takeover controls
• Cross-border payments, remittances and digital banking
• POPIA and UK GDPR
• Process automation and continuous improvement
• Excel and BI tools such as Power BI and Tableau
• Operational risk and control frameworks
• People leadership and performance management