Payments Product Manager

Crown Agents Bank is a vastly growing and regulated UK bank that connects emerging and frontier markets to the rest of the world, using FX and payments technology. We are transforming the way payments and FX move through emerging markets, reducing friction so that more money gets to those who need it. Emerging markets payments are usually challenging, expensive, unreliable and opaque. Our solutions help fix these pain points. Ultimately, we connect traditionally hard-to-reach regions to global financial infrastructure, giving access to the best prices and the fastest, most reliable settlement.

FX and cross-border payments are often complex and expensive, especially when operating in emerging markets. Crown Agents Bank (CAB) wraps its deep and trusted relationships and strength of network around innovative digital capabilities, and cross-border transaction banking solutions to enable fintech, corporates, governments, development organisations and banks to move money to, from, and across often hard-to-reach markets.

A Payments Product Manager will lead the end-to-end development of new products and features for our cross-border payments and FX solutions. You will work closely with clients and stakeholders across the bank to prioritise, define, and build new products and features. We're looking to bring someone on board who can work with customers and our exceptional engineering team to deliver an outstanding payment offering serving our clients across the world.

This role requires customer focus, a cross-functional mindset, technical understanding, and attention to detail. We'll look to you to drive execution by collaborating across teams including Sales, Operations, Technology, Risk & Compliance, and more. You will help build our future through sound judgement on how to improve and maintain our platform.

The role will cover the following areas:

• Development of new payments capabilities across the end-to-end payments offering including payments processing, digital client servicing, and cross-currency payments
• Own CAB’s Client Portal User Interface and host-to-host payments channels
• Oversight of CAB pension payment product platform and capabilities
• Delivery of API enhancements to support new client features

Understand and define product priorities and commercial benefits

• Understand and contribute to CAB product strategy and target state objectives, using this to guide focus and priorities for transformation initiatives
• Understand current and future client needs, and competitor propositions, to define product requirements for CAB’s end to end payments product offering
• Undertake and commission analysis to inform proposed roadmap priorities, considering commercial and strategic benefits and costs. Proactively driving data based decision making and priorities, using analysis to critically challenge and support proposals.

Drive communication and collaboration between teams:

• Liaise cross functionally within the bank (especially with operations, technology and risk) to ensure payments products are fit for purpose as the bank scales and to meet our commercial objectives, adapting roadmap and priorities accordingly
• Drive buy-in across the bank for proposed changes, involving relevant stakeholders from initiation, requirements gathering, prioritisation, approvals, testing, introduction to service and beyond.
• Whilst you will be working with solution architects, BAs, and engineers – a hands on approach with a bias to action will be essential. You can expect to sketch out ideas and processes, write proposals and document high and lower-level requirements alongside colleagues to drive progress and clarify product needs.

Definition of payments product requirements

• Work closely with all functions including Tech, Sales, Risk and Operations to gather requirements and write detailed specification documents for the team, working through challenges and championing client outcomes.
• Engage in end to end system thinking to ensure overall payments offering meets client and CAB needs, is consistent and that there are no loose ends
• Act as owner of the product offering, nurturing and developing capabilities, documentation, support and interactions with other CAB products (such as FX) to deliver our clients end to end needs.

Oversee iterative delivery of new payments capabilities

• Lead delivery of roadmap items, often working through others to deliver a scalable, fit for purpose payments offering to clients. This will involve leading one or more engineering teams, and delivering through vendors as required.
• Oversight and ultimate ownership of full set of detailed requirements, providing appropriate challenge to BAs, Architects, Engineers, Testing, others
• Liaise with colleagues in product and across the bank to clarify requirements and to validate your decisions in client impacting trade offs
• Ensure appropriate documentation is developed by delivery teams

Support smooth introduction of new capabilities

• Act as key business stakeholders in taking project deliveries through all relevant bank processes involving relevant stakeholders and obtaining required approvals
• Oversight of testing and rollout planning and execution – working closely with impacted teams as an SME to support introduction of new capabilities and resolution of production issues
• Proactively identify issues and own through to resolution or capturing on the product backlog with the appropriate priority
• Provide appropriate upwards management and reporting, seeking opportunities to communicate product feature deliveries

Bachelor's Degree or Equivalent Level

Experience:

• 3+ years product management experience, writing specs for complex features and systems
• Have digital payments and ideally cross-border payments experience
• Strong written and spoken communication skills
• Good strategic thinking, commercial acumen, and product intuition
• Experience working with both cutting edge and legacy technology systems
• Comfortable working in a regulated environment and able to work cross-functionally to launch new products & features
• Ability to analyse quantitative data and use it to inform decision making

• Hybrid working
• Contributory personal pension plan: - Minimum: Employee 2% and Employer 7%. Employer matches contributions in 1% increments to a maximum of: Employee 5% and Employer 10%
• Life Assurance – 4 times annual salary
• Group Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance – this may include cover for partner and or children at company cost. Cover includes Optical, Dental and Audiology
• Discretionary Bonus
• Competitive Annual Leave
• 2 Volunteering Days
• Benefit Hub