Industry Specialisation
FinTech & Payments Leadership
Sercxi runs engaged executive search for C-level, VP and Director leadership in FinTech, payments and digital banking. We place CTOs, Chief Product Officers, VPs of Payments, Heads of Fraud and Heads of Compliance Engineering for scale-stage operators across Singapore (MAS), Amsterdam (DNB/EBA) and Dubai (CBUAE/DFSA). Engaged mandates only, never contingency.
Engaged mandate · Partner-led · Confidential · Reply within 24 hours
Mandate Context
Built For
Boards, CEOs, COOs and CHROs hiring senior leadership into licensed FinTech, payments and digital banking operators.
Regulated FinTech is the hardest senior hire in technology. The leaders who can hold MAS, DNB and DFSA fluency simultaneously are a small, named group. Engaged search exists to reach them under confidentiality without leaking the mandate to a regulator-watched market.
- Typical Mandates
- CTO, CPO, VP Payments, Head of Compliance Engineering
- Sector Focus
- Payments, digital banking, embedded finance, fraud AI
- Sector Focus
- MAS · DNB / EBA · CBUAE / DFSA
- Engagement Model
- Engaged retained · NDA available
The Market
Payments infrastructure is being rewritten in real time
Real-time settlement is restructuring every layer of financial services leadership. When a payment settles in seconds rather than days, the fraud detection, compliance monitoring, and risk architecture must operate at the same speed. This creates roles - VP Payments, Head of Fraud with ML expertise - that didn't exist in their current form three years ago.
Simultaneously, embedded finance is collapsing the boundary between banking and software. The Compliance Engineer - someone who builds API infrastructure that is natively compliant - has become the most critical hire in Banking-as-a-Service. The career path that produces this person does not yet exist in any established form.
Meanwhile, digital banking licensing across all three corridors is creating mandatory C-suite hires that cannot be filled from traditional talent pools. Every banking licence is a hiring brief. The organisations that read it as such move 12–18 months ahead.
"The future does not belong to the AI that replaces the strategist. It belongs to the strategist who learns to wield AI with extraordinary skill."
The Precision
Three signals that distinguish exceptional FinTech leaders
Every layer of modern financial services now runs on machine learning models making thousands of decisions per second - decisions that directly impact regulatory standing and customer trust. The leaders who navigate this environment share three specific forms of precision.
Regulatory Bilingualism
Singapore MAS demands AI transparency. EU regulators require model explainability. The leaders we look for have sat in boardrooms explaining gradient boosting to compliance officers and in engineering stand-ups translating regulatory requirements into technical constraints. That fluency across both worlds - model architecture and regulatory framework - is what separates a great hire from a catastrophic one.
IMPACT: IntegrationVelocity With Governance
FinTech ships monthly while banks plan quarterly. But one security breach ends careers - and sometimes companies. The leaders we find move fast with zero compromise on security and compliance. They've built CI/CD pipelines that include automated compliance checks. They understand that velocity without governance isn't speed - it's recklessness. That calibration is a form of precision most search firms can't assess.
IMPACT: Precision Under AmbiguityTrust as Product
In FinTech, trust isn't a brand attribute - it's the product itself. The leaders who understand this build systems where compliance is architecturally embedded, not bolted on. Where every ML model in production has an explainability layer. The CTO succession playbook for dual-regulatory environments makes clear: commercial judgment that distinguishes leaders who build lasting companies from those who build fast ones is increasingly a governance capability.
IMPACT: Trust MechanicsHow IMPACT Calibrates
What we weight differently for FinTech mandates
The IMPACT Framework's seven diagnostic questions apply to every search. For FinTech mandates, three dimensions carry disproportionate weight - because the failure modes are regulation-specific and the cost of misalignment is measured in licence risk, not just revenue.
Trust Mechanics - In financial services, trust is balance-sheet material. A single compliance failure can trigger regulatory intervention, customer flight, and partner withdrawal simultaneously. We assess whether candidates have built trust architectures that survived real regulatory scrutiny - not theoretical frameworks, but systems tested under audit pressure.
Integration - FinTech leaders must integrate across engineering, compliance, product, and commercial functions that operate at fundamentally different speeds. The CTO who ships weekly cannot afford a compliance function that reviews monthly. We probe whether candidates have built organisations where compliance velocity matches engineering velocity.
Accountability Architecture - In regulated finance, personal liability is real. MAS fit-and-proper requirements, EU PSD3 accountability provisions, and CBUAE governance frameworks create individual accountability that extends beyond corporate structures. We assess whether candidates understand - and accept - this expanded accountability radius.
Who We Find
FinTech leadership calibrated for precision
These are the FinTech and payments profile types our partners have placed across regulated markets in APAC and EMEA.
VP Sales - Financial Services
Enterprise sales leaders who sell into banks, insurers, and payment processors. Navigate regulated procurement, multi-year contract cycles, and C-suite relationships where domain credibility is the price of admission.
Business Development Director - FinTech
Opens new banking and insurance partnerships for FinTech platforms. Maps institutional buyer ecosystems, builds relationships with treasury and payments decision-makers, and creates enterprise pipeline in regulated markets.
VP Engineering
Technical leaders who've shipped AI-powered financial platforms to production. Navigate SOC 2 audits while maintaining weekly release cycles. Understand regulatory constraints without losing innovation velocity.
VP Payments / Head of Fraud
Real-time payments infrastructure operators. ML-native fraud detection architects. Understand the intersection of settlement speed, regulatory accountability, and cost economics.
VP Product
Product leaders shipping AI-powered financial products that customers trust. Balance innovation, UX, compliance, and speed - knowing that in FinTech, trust is the product.
Head of FinTech Product Marketing
Positions payments, lending, and embedded finance products for institutional and enterprise buyers. Builds trust-driven narratives around security, compliance, and performance that differentiate in a crowded market.
By Market
FinTech Search Across Three Corridors
Singapore: FinTech Executive Search
MAS licensing, digital bank mandates, and the densest FinTech ecosystem in APAC.
→Amsterdam: FinTech Executive Search
Adyen, Mollie, and the European payments corridor. PSD3-ready leadership.
→Dubai: FinTech Executive Search
CBUAE open banking, DIFC Innovation Licence, and GCC financial infrastructure buildout.
→Context
Related Services & Perspectives
Executive Hiring Lab
Transfer our search methodology to your internal team. One day. Permanent capability.
→AI Capability Assessment
Map your leadership against your actual FinTech challenges before the search begins.
→Cybersecurity & AI Risk
Security leadership calibrated for regulated finance across three corridors.
→FinTech CTO Succession Playbook
MAS vs DNB dual-compliance and what it means for CTO succession.
→Invisible Execution Gap in FinTech
The 30% drag on your expansion roadmap you can't see on org charts.
→— FREQUENTLY ASKED
Common Questions
Know What You're Missing Before You Brief.
The IMPACT Framework. Six dimensions that distinguish leaders who execute from those who present well. Used in every Sercxi assessment. Download the diagnostic.
No sequence. No newsletter. One document.
FinTech Leadership Under GCC and EU Rules, Simultaneously.
AI leadership placement for regulated financial infrastructure across three jurisdictions.
Confidential · 30 minutes · Partner-led · No obligation
Three candidates, every one we would hire ourselves.
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