Head of Risk & Underwriting, Payments
Manifest Financial Inc. offers tailored financial solutions designed specifically for entrepreneurs and the platforms they use. Operating as a B2B2C platform, Manifest addresses the business banking needs of creators and micro-businesses, with a focus on simplifying financial challenges and boosting engagement within the creator economy. Our services are tailored to creators and social platforms by solving unique financial pain points and fostering thriving communities.
As Manifest expands its payments and embedded finance capabilities, we are looking for an experienced risk and underwriting leader to help us scale responsibly, protect customers and partners, and maintain a strong compliance and risk management foundation.
Position Summary
Manifest is seeking a Head of Risk & Underwriting to lead merchant underwriting, payments risk, fraud monitoring, and portfolio risk management for our payments business.
This role will be responsible for building and operating the frameworks Manifest uses to evaluate merchant and platform risk, approve and monitor accounts, prevent fraud, manage processing exposure, establish reserves and limits, support sponsor bank and processor requirements, and maintain strong risk governance as the business scales.
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who understands payments risk in practice, not just in policy. The ideal candidate can design scalable controls, make sound approval and escalation decisions, work constructively with commercial teams, and help a fast-growing fintech operate with discipline, speed, and trust.
Key Responsibilities
Merchant Underwriting & Approval Strategy
- Develop, maintain, and continuously improve Manifest’s merchant underwriting policies, procedures, approval standards, restricted/prohibited business categories, risk matrices, and escalation protocols.
- Lead the end-to-end underwriting process for new merchant, platform, and embedded finance relationships, including review of business models, ownership structures, beneficial ownership, processing history, financial condition, delivery risk, industry risk, expected volume, and payout activity.
- Create clear underwriting standards for creator economy, marketplace, platform, B2B2C, high-risk, and emerging payment models.
- Establish approval authority levels, review requirements, exception processes, merchant risk tiers, and documentation standards.
- Partner with Sales, Product, Operations, Legal, and Compliance to support responsible growth while maintaining appropriate risk standards.
Portfolio Risk, Exposure & Reserves
- Own ongoing portfolio monitoring across transaction activity, settlement exposure, chargebacks, ACH returns, disputes, reversals, negative balances, refunds, fraud indicators, and other operational risk signals.
- Establish merchant volume limits, velocity controls, exposure thresholds, funding holds, reserve requirements, collateral requirements, and other risk-based controls.
- Develop procedures for periodic merchant reviews, enhanced due diligence reviews, trigger-based reviews, and annual risk reassessments.
- Identify portfolio-level trends and emerging risks, including concentration risk, industry risk, platform risk, delayed delivery exposure, and merchant behavior changes.
- Work with Finance and Operations to prevent and address settlement failures, funding gaps, reconciliation issues, loss events, and recovery matters.
Fraud Mitigation & Risk Operations
- Develop and oversee fraud prevention and mitigation controls across merchant acquiring, payouts, card activity, ACH activity, account activity, and platform-based payment flows.
- Build escalation procedures for fraud events, high-risk activity, suspicious merchant behavior, excessive disputes, chargeback spikes, return rate issues, and urgent partner notifications.
- Create feedback loops between underwriting, transaction monitoring, disputes, operations, and compliance to continuously improve risk deci