VP & Head of Audit, Financial Crime Compliance – First Abu Dhabi Bank

First Abu Dhabi Bank is hiring a Vice President and Head of Audit for Financial Crime Compliance, a senior internal audit leadership role responsible for auditing the bank’s financial crime compliance function, anti-money laundering, sanctions, fraud prevention, and related controls. This is senior, highly specialized audit work, financial crime compliance is one of the most heavily regulated and scrutinized areas of any major bank’s operations, and audit coverage here needs to be genuinely rigorous.

Expect the role to involve leading audit engagements across financial crime compliance controls, managing an audit team, and reporting findings to senior leadership and potentially the board’s audit committee. As the largest bank in the UAE and one of the world’s largest and safest financial institutions, FAB faces serious regulatory expectations around financial crime prevention, and the audit function plays a critical role in providing independent assurance that controls are actually working as intended.

A strong candidate brings substantial audit leadership experience with deep financial crime compliance subject matter expertise, comfortable operating at a senior level with direct accountability for audit quality and regulatory credibility.

Financial crime compliance failures carry some of the most severe consequences available to a major bank, regulatory fines, reputational damage, and in serious cases, restrictions on operating licenses, which makes the audit function covering this area one of the most consequential roles within FAB's broader governance structure. A VP & Head of Audit who leads genuinely rigorous, independent audit engagements provides the bank's senior leadership and board with credible assurance that financial crime controls are actually working, not just documented on paper. Because financial crime compliance regulation continues to intensify globally, with regulators imposing increasingly severe penalties for failures, strong audit coverage in this area directly protects FAB from potentially existential regulatory and reputational risk. This role's findings and recommendations also directly shape how the bank's financial crime compliance function evolves and improves over time, audit identifies the gaps that compliance teams then need to close. Given FAB's position as the UAE's largest bank and a globally recognized financial institution, the credibility of its financial crime compliance audit function matters not just internally but to international regulators and correspondent banking relationships that depend on trust in FAB's control environment.

A VP & Head of Audit role in Financial Crime Compliance represents genuinely senior audit leadership in one of the most specialized, high-stakes areas of banking risk, exactly the kind of experience that positions someone for Chief Audit Executive, Chief Compliance Officer, or broader senior risk and governance executive roles over time. Financial crime compliance expertise is in persistently strong demand globally as regulatory scrutiny intensifies, which means this specialization offers genuinely durable, high-value career relevance rather than being tied to a passing regulatory trend. Leading audit engagements at FAB's scale, as the UAE's largest bank and a globally recognized institution, provides exposure to genuinely sophisticated financial crime risk and control environments that smaller institutions simply could not offer. The audit leadership and senior stakeholder communication skills built in this role are also highly portable across the global banking and financial services audit market, this is exactly the kind of experience that international banks and consulting firms actively recruit for. Because financial crime compliance audit sits at the intersection of technical subject matter expertise and senior organizational influence, professionals who build genuine depth here are well positioned for a wide range of senior risk, audit, or compliance executive career paths.

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Law, Accounting, or a related field; relevant audit or financial crime compliance certifications (CAMS, CIA, or similar) are a strong advantage
• Substantial audit leadership experience, with deep subject matter expertise in financial crime compliance, AML, and sanctions
• Proven ability to lead and manage audit teams and complex audit engagements
• Strong understanding of UAE and international financial crime regulatory expectations
• Excellent reporting and communication skills for presenting findings to senior leadership and audit committees
• Strong professional skepticism and independence in audit judgment
• Comfortable operating at a senior, high-accountability level within a major financial institution