Head of Finance

  • Riga, Latvia
  • Full-Time
  • Remote

Job Description:

About the Role:

This is the first finance hire for a new European payments company whose Latvian entity is applying to Latvijas Banka for an electronic money institution license. You will own everything that makes the regulated entity work financially: safeguarding, own funds, regulatory reporting, statutory accounts, and treasury, and be the person the regulator speaks to about it.

You report to the Group CFO, with a dotted line to the entity's Managing Director. At the start, the function is you and two outsourced providers: the first year is designing controls and writing procedures, not running an established team. Part-time during the license phase, full-time once licensed.

What You'll Do:

  • Own the safeguarding model end to end, including daily reconciliation of safeguarded funds and the safeguarding policy
  • Calculate and monitor own funds and capital headroom; prepare regulatory returns to Latvijas Banka
  • Deliver the finance inputs to the license application and the ICAAP-equivalent assessment
  • Produce the entity's annual financial statements and manage the statutory audit
  • Oversee outsourced bookkeeping and payroll providers; own VID filings and the ledger
  • Manage liquidity, settlement and FX across account-to-account, open banking and card flows
  • Own the entity's financial model, budget, forecast and product unit economics
  • Build the finance control framework: authorization limits, segregation of duties, four-eyes principle

Requirements:

  • Qualified accountant or equivalent finance qualification, and a degree in finance, economics, accounting or a related field
  • Experience inside a regulated financial institution - EMI, payment institution, bank or investment firm
  • Hands-on experience of at least one of: client money safeguarding, regulatory capital calculation, or regulatory reporting to a supervisor
  • Working knowledge of the Latvian regulatory and tax environment and Latvian statutory reporting
  • Professional English; Latvian at working level
  • An impeccable professional reputation - the role is subject to Latvijas Banka fit-and-proper expectations

Nice to Have:

  • Experience of a license application or authorization variation
  • Payments background: settlement, scheme reconciliation, multi-currency or card issuing
  • Familiarity with DORA
  • Experience managing outsourced accounting and payroll providers in a regulated setting

Why Join?

  • Build the finance function of a licensed institution from scratch - no legacy setup, your design
  • Work on the license application itself - rare experience in the market
  • A clear mandate: where the regulated entity's obligations conflict with the group's, the entity comes first
  • AI-first payments company with a small, senior team, backed by founders who have built and scaled well-known European payment companies