Head of Underwriting

Job Description

As the Head of Underwriting, you will be responsible for shaping and leading Mangopay’s merchant risk and underwriting practices across the full lifecycle. You will ensure that our underwriting standards are not only robust and compliant but also globally scalable as our platform ecosystem continues to grow in scale and complexity.

This is a high-impact leadership role sitting at the intersection of Risk, Compliance and Commercial teams. You will be responsible for balancing ambitious business growth with a disciplined risk appetite, ensuring that our underwriting policies are optimized for performance, aligned with international card scheme rules (Visa/Mastercard) and integrated into our cutting-edge payment technology.

Roles & Responsibilities:

Strategic Policy Governance

• Framework Optimization: Own and continuously refine Mangopay’s global underwriting policy and risk appetite frameworks to reflect portfolio performance and emerging fraud trends.
• Decisioning Excellence: Establish and maintain sophisticated decisioning frameworks that harmonize merchant onboarding, ongoing monitoring and lifecycle management.
• Strategic Alignment: Ensure that risk standards are seamlessly integrated with the broader business strategy, enabling sustainable growth without compromising network integrity.

Portfolio Oversight & Risk Assessment

• Lifecycle Management: Oversee the end-to-end merchant risk lifecycle, ensuring a seamless experience from onboarding through to periodic reviews and escalations.
• Risk Criteria Definition: Set clear, data-driven criteria for merchant acceptance, ensuring proactive identification of high-risk profiles and implementation of mitigation strategies.
• Monitoring Supervision: Partner with internal teams to supervise portfolio health, focusing on abnormal transaction patterns, chargeback trends and fraud prevention.

Leadership & Talent Development

• Team Leadership: Lead and mentor a high-performing team of Underwriting Officers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and analytical rigor.
• Expert Escalation: Serve as the final internal authority and escalation point for complex or high-exposure underwriting decisions.

Ecosystem & Cross-functional Collaboration

• Internal Advisory: Act as a strategic partner to Commercial, Product and Finance teams to support product launches and market expansion with risk-based frameworks.
• Regulatory & Scheme Mastery: Ensure 100% adherence to global card scheme rules (Visa, Mastercard, Cartes Bancaires) and evolving regulatory requirements.
• Audit Readiness: Maintain a gold-standard audit trail and lead the business through internal and external regulatory reviews.

Data Intelligence & Innovation

• KPI Management: Define and track key underwriting metrics, including approval rates, loss ratios and operational efficiency.
• Digital Transformation: Drive the implementation of advanced tooling and automation to enhance the speed and accuracy of underwriting decisions.

Experience

You are recognised for:

• 10+ years of experience in merchant underwriting, risk management, or payment operations within a major PSP, Acquirer, or Fintech.
• Strategic Leadership: A proven track record of managing senior risk teams and owning complex policy frameworks in a fast-scaling environment.
• Scheme Expertise: Deep technical knowledge of global card scheme rules, payment flows and regulatory environments.
• Analytical Mindset: Strong ability to balance commercial growth objectives with robust risk mitigation strategies.
• Tooling Proficiency: Deep familiarity with underwriting industry-standard tools.
• Stakeholder Influence: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence at the Executive and Board levels.

Additional Information

• Stage 1: HR Talent Team interview
• Stage 2: Technical Interviews with Subject Matter Experts (Deep dive into Scheme Rules)
• Stage 3: Case study / practical assessment (Strategic compliance scenario)