ORM role Senior Manager, Spain Chief Risk Officer, Operational Risk

The Global Risk & Compliance (GRC) organization serves as American Express’ independent risk management function. GRC maintains the enterprise risk framework, provides oversight and challenge, and monitors key risks. By embedding risk discipline into strategy and operations, GRC enables responsible growth, innovation, and long-term value creation while protecting customers and shareholders.

The Global Risk & Compliance Organization is an independent risk management function, led by the Chief Risk Officer, with the objective of ensuring that American Express operates in a safe, sound, and fully compliant manner with all applicable regulatory expectations. Global Risk & Compliance creates and maintains the overall risk management framework, performs independent risk management assessments, and monitors applicable risks. Colleagues at Global Risk & Compliance are passionate about our commitment to drive the Company’s goals of growth and progress by creating a culture of risk awareness and proactivity around regulatory matters. 

The International CRO organization within Global Risk and Compliance (GRC) is responsible for identifying and managing risk across all processes and geographies at American Express. 

Operational Risk Management (ORM) helps ensure that operational risks are identified, assessed, mitigated, monitored, reported and escalated in alignment with the Operational Risk Management Framework (ORMF), Enterprise policies and applicable regulatory expectations.

How will you make an impact in this role?

The Senior Manager, Operational Risk, Enterprise Risk Management AEESA & AEPE, within the GRC organization, will support second line of defense oversight of operational risk for the Spanish legal entities (AEESA & AEPE) and European markets.  We are seeking an experienced risk leader to be a part of this exciting journey.  The role will have a dual reporting line to the Spain Chief Risk Officer (CRO) locally and the Enterprise ORM team, ensuring both local legal entity accountability and alignment with Enterprise ORM expectations. The colleague will help interpret and apply the ORMF to the Spanish legal entities context, provide operational risk subject matter expertise, support governance and regulatory engagement, and develop insight into the operational risk profile of the legal entity using available risk data, reporting and business context. The incumbent will support the Spain CRO and the ORM Director in providing independent second line oversight of operational risk and strengthen the governance structure for our Spanish businesses.

Key Responsibilities:

• Act as an operational risk subject matter expert, helping interpret and apply the ORMF, Enterprise expectations and core operational risk elements in a way that is proportionate to the AEESA & AEPE legal entities context.
• Oversee and help articulate the operational risk profile of risk-generating activities relative to the overall risk profile of the legal entity.
• Provide risk-informed perspective and challenge on matters that could materially affect the legal entity operational risk profile, governance or regulatory position.
• Support operational risk reporting and governance materials at the level of detail appropriate to the audience and forum.
• Review issues and findings impacting ILE, and oversee effective remediation
• Own ILE Ops Risk Governance Documents, where required
• 2nd Line oversight lead for ILE Regulatory Change Management relating to Ops Risk. 
• Participate in the Risk Appetite Framework (RAF) refresh process and seek to align International Legal Entities (ILE) Ops Risk metrics with Enterprise (as far as possible)
• Act as the main point of contact for Operational Risk for regulators, Audit and local Leadership
• Act as the Operational Risk representative on any LE-specific risk management committee, and point of contact for Operational Risk at LE board meetings (as required) 

• Help identify emerging operational risks, themes or areas requiring further management attention, action or escalation for the ILE.

• Partner with local stakeholders to support consistent interpretation of requirements and effective alignment between legal entity and Enterprise expectations.
• Coordinate with Enterprise Risk Lead on 2nd Line testing, and/or support ILE Risk Type testing & provide output of ILE testing to Enterprise for awareness and risk aggregation
• Ensure appropriate communication of risks between the ILE and Enterprise 
• Support the ILE CRO in their oversight duties aligned to the Risk Governance Framework and applicable policies
• Work with the Enterprise team to develop the LE metrics dashboard, including RAF metrics, aligned with applicable regulations
• Support operational risk reporting materials and dashboards, and governance materials at the level of detail appropriate to the audience and forum.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of leadership experience in risk management or a similar role;
• Strong business acumen with a risk-reward control perspective;
• Experience in interacting with regulators and familiarity with Spanish and European regulatory landscape and requirements;
• Demonstrated ability to successfully manage multiple priorities under pressure;
• Fluency in English (verbal and written); 
• Degree in business, economics, engineering, law, risk management or a related field is preferred.

Leadership Skills:

• Proven leader who can build, inspire, and coach a team with a passion for the business;
• Excellent relationship and influencing skills with the ability to build productive relationships across teams and levels of seniority;
• Self-confident with a strong sense of integrity and the ability and willingness to challenge and be challenged;
• Proactive in identifying issues, delivering and escalating key findings, and advising on recommended solutions to correct issues or mitigate risks;
• Ability to communicate oversight findings to colleagues, business partners, and senior leaders;
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

Employment eligibility to work with American Express in Span is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.