Vice President of Underwriting

Our client is seeking a Vice President of Underwriting to lead and evolve underwriting strategy across merchant acquiring. This leader will drive profitable portfolio growth while maintaining disciplined oversight of credit, fraud, regulatory, and reputational risk. The role blends strategic leadership, portfolio management, operational scale, and governance across underwriting activities. Success in this position requires a commercially minded risk leader who can turn performance data, regulatory expectations, and market trends into practical underwriting frameworks that support responsible growth.

What You Will Do

• Define and execute an underwriting strategy aligned with growth targets, risk appetite, and capital efficiency objectives.
• Establish and maintain risk tolerance frameworks by vertical, channel, and product type.
• Partner with Sales, Product, Finance, and Compliance to embed risk adjusted decisioning into go to market strategy.
• Oversee end to end merchant underwriting across SMB and midmarket.
• Develop and maintain underwriting policy, exception governance, and escalation protocols.
• Monitor portfolio performance, including loss rates, chargeback exposure, fraud indicators, and concentration risk, and recalibrate underwriting criteria as needed.
• Support the implementation of predictive modeling and machine learning capabilities to strengthen risk scoring and pricing precision.
• Drive underwriting automation and straight through processing to improve speed to decision while preserving control integrity.
• Optimize workflow design, capacity planning, and service level standards to support scalable growth.
• Build quality assurance and second line review mechanisms to reinforce policy adherence and regulatory compliance.
• Ensure underwriting practices align with card brand rules, sponsor bank requirements, AML and BSA standards, and applicable state and federal regulations.
• Maintain strong documentation, audit trails, and defensible decision frameworks.
• Serve as the primary underwriting liaison during regulatory exams, sponsor bank reviews, and internal audits.
• Champion data driven decisioning through alternative data sources and third party risk intelligence tools.
• Collaborate with Technology and Data teams to modernize underwriting systems and reduce manual friction points.
• Use analytics to identify emerging industry risk trends and proactively adjust exposure.
• Recruit, develop, and retain underwriting talent while establishing clear performance KPIs tied to portfolio outcomes and operational efficiency.

What You Bring

• 10 or more years of progressive underwriting or credit risk leadership experience within payments, fintech, merchant acquiring, or financial services.
• Deep expertise in merchant risk, card not present exposure, chargeback management, fraud typologies, and high risk vertical underwriting.
• Demonstrated experience scaling underwriting functions in high growth environments.
• Strong knowledge of card network rules, sponsor bank frameworks, AML and BSA expectations, and regulatory risk management principles.
• Proven success using analytics, automation, and technology to modernize risk operations.
• Executive level communication skills with the ability to influence cross functional stakeholders and board level audiences.