Hiring for Regulated Corporate Integrity, Investigations and Financial-Crime Functions
In-house integrity, investigations, financial-crime and regulatory-response teams at banks, insurers, asset managers, exchanges and infrastructure operators.
Where this appointment sits today.
Every major regulated corporate now runs an in-house function that looks, at least in outline, like the investigations practice of a professional-services firm. That function is responsible for internal matters, regulatory response, financial-crime oversight and the governance controls that supervisors expect to see operating continuously.
Several things have driven the build-out. Supervisors have grown more assertive and more technical. Sanctions regimes have become denser and more cross-jurisdictional. The cost of a poorly-handled matter - measured in public reputation, supervisory intervention and shareholder patience - has risen. And the expectation that the firm can self-investigate credibly before the regulator has to is now baked into the regulatory dialogue in most major markets.
The leadership shape is now stable. A Group Head sits above a handful of regional or functional Heads, and under each of those sits a senior team of specialists (financial crime, anti-bribery, sanctions, regulatory response, internal audit-adjacent). Group Investigations Counsel is increasingly either dotted-line or solid-line to the General Counsel rather than to Compliance.
The hiring bar is high. We are retained to find practitioners who combine regulatory literacy (written and spoken, at the level a supervisor will engage with), investigative judgement, the seniority to operate across the executive committee, and the political sophistication to handle matters that cut across business lines.
Roles we are asked to search.
Mandates vary, but most fall into one of the groupings below. We brief on seniority, scope and the specific mix of technical depth versus leadership required.
Group leadership
- Group Head of Investigations
- Group Investigations Counsel
- Chief Integrity Officer
- Head of Group Financial Crime
Regional and functional heads
- Regional Head of Investigations
- Head of Anti-Bribery and Sanctions
- Head of Regulatory Response
- Head of Financial-Crime Operations
- Head of Internal Investigations
Senior practitioners
- Senior Investigator
- Investigations Manager
- Financial-Crime Lead
- Regulatory Response Manager
- Senior Counsel, Investigations
The candidate profile we target.
Candidates typically come from three backgrounds: professional-services investigations or forensic practices, regulators and enforcement agencies, and in-house teams at peer corporates. Law-firm white-collar backgrounds and former public-sector law-enforcement experience also feature at senior levels.
Core credentials are CFE (ACFE), CAMS (ACAMS) and ICA diplomas. Sub-specialism credentials (sanctions, anti-bribery, cyber investigations) are expected at Head-of-function level. For Group-level roles, a credible mix of in-house operational leadership and prior external practice experience is usually the winning profile.
Multilingual capability is a material differentiator for APAC-based and cross-regional roles, particularly those that involve engaging with local supervisors in the local working language.
Where this client category concentrates its mandates.
- Financial Services
- Insurance
- Asset Management
- Exchanges & Clearing
- Infrastructure
- Energy & Natural Resources
- Commodities & Shipping
Frequently asked.
- Can you source a Group Head role that reports into Legal, not Compliance?
- Yes. The reporting line is one of the first items we clarify at briefing; it materially shapes the candidate pool. We have placed Group Heads into both structures and can source against either.
- Do you handle searches driven by a live supervisory matter?
- Yes. We run these searches with tighter timelines and a narrower confidentiality ring. The search is generally kept outside the firm's usual HR workflow until the offer is ready to be made.
- Can you source practitioners with supervisor-level dialogue experience?
- Yes. For senior in-house roles, prior experience of engaging supervisors directly is often a hard requirement. We screen for it at longlist stage and verify at reference stage.
- Are these roles hybrid-friendly?
- Generally yes at senior levels, with the caveat that live matters and supervisory dialogue tend to require in-person availability at short notice. The specific arrangement is usually agreed at offer stage.
- Do you place into sanctions-specific roles?
- Yes. Heads of Sanctions, sanctions-operations leads and sanctions-investigations specialists are a regular component of our in-house mandates, particularly across banking and asset-management clients.
Brief us confidentially on your search.
A Partner with direct experience of this client category will be on the first call. No shortlist is shared beyond the client on the mandate.