Safeguarding-and-Settlement Board Adviser

The mandate

The platform serves merchants across currencies and settlement calendars, holding safeguarded customer funds while separately prefunding schemes, correspondent accounts and local payout partners. Finance reports large cash balances, yet portions reflect customer ownership, acquirer reserves, unsettled chargebacks, weekend prefunding or money held in entities unable to support group operations. A partner-bank outage exposed reconciliation delays and uncertainty about who could redirect flows. Directors need confidence that growth liquidity never depends on customer money and that protection remains operational during bank or processor failure.

The adviser will challenge a safeguarding-and-settlement map from customer receipt through ledger attribution, account placement, reconciliation, foreign-exchange conversion, payout, return, chargeback and release. The board needs entity and jurisdiction distinctions, intraday and weekend timing, concentration, bank set-off analysis, break ageing, prefunding logic and corporate-liquidity boundaries. Particular scrutiny should fall on accounts labelled safeguarded where mandate language, operational access or reconciliation practice does not match the intended protection.

The cadence consists of fortnightly treasury-and-risk challenge, a monthly board committee session in Tel Aviv and two simulations covering partner-bank and settlement-processor failure. The adviser will sample corridors and legal entities rather than certify the entire control environment, inspect evidence of account designation and observe actual break resolution. Written advice will state which conclusion relies on external counsel, local regulatory interpretation, bank confirmation or untested operational assumption.

This seat carries no line authority and no executive responsibility for safeguarding, payments, treasury, compliance, product or regulated-entity management. The adviser cannot move funds, reroute customers, approve reconciliation, sign bank mandates, contact regulators independently, set reserves or attest compliance. Management remains accountable for operating controls and incident decisions; counsel owns legal analysis; entity boards retain statutory obligations. The adviser supplies challenge, escalation logic and governance perspective only.

The appointment lasts eleven months, with renewal dependent on a new board resolution identifying unfinished jurisdictional or resilience questions. Relationships with banks, schemes, acquirers, processors, wallet providers, regulators, investors and payment competitors must be declared before appointment and refreshed quarterly. Any corridor-specific conflict requires recusal, and neither vendor recommendation, bank placement nor remediation work may generate referral or contingent compensation.

Why the board wants this voice

Treasury naturally sees aggregate cash, product teams see settlement speed and compliance sees legal requirements by licence, while customer protection fails across those boundaries. Growth pressure can make temporary prefunding and permanent corporate liquidity look interchangeable. An independent payments-liquidity adviser can challenge that ambiguity and simulation evidence without operating the platform or selling a partner-bank solution.

What you will own

• Challenge end-to-end customer-money flows by entity, licence, currency, bank account, ledger status, settlement event and legal ownership.
• Test account designation, access, set-off exposure, diversification, intraday movement and reconciliation against intended safeguarding treatment.
• Separate corporate cash, customer funds, partner prefunding, scheme collateral, acquirer reserves, chargebacks and unsettled breaks.
• Examine corridor liquidity for weekends, holidays, currency conversion, payout cut-offs, return timing and partner concentration.
• Observe bank and processor simulations, recording failed decisions, inaccessible evidence, delayed reconciliations and customer-impact thresholds.
• Frame board indicators, escalation triggers, external-advice dependencies, incident boundaries and accountable remediation expectations.
• Deliver an independent closing view on residual safeguarding, settlement, concentration and corporate-runway vulnerabilities.

Candidate qualifications

• Has governed safeguarding, client-money or payment-settlement liquidity within a regulated multi-entity payments business.
• Understands scheme settlement, acquiring reserves, prefunding, correspondent banking, chargebacks, reconciliations and foreign-exchange timing.
• Can distinguish legal ownership, ledger attribution, bank account status and operational accessibility during disruption.
• Has challenged partner-bank failure and settlement-continuity readiness through realistic, evidence-led simulations.
• Brings board-level judgement across treasury, regulated entities, compliance, product growth and customer-protection consequences.
• Is independent of partner-bank placement, payment processing sales, safeguarding assurance referrals and remediation vendor incentives.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend monthly Tel Aviv committee days and both multijurisdictional settlement simulations under secure access controls.
• Brings direct regulated safeguarding or client-money depth; ordinary payments product or corporate treasury experience is insufficient.
• Will not move funds, imply compliance certification, privately contact regulators or recommend partners for economic benefit.
• Will disclose all bank, scheme, acquirer, processor, investor, regulator and payment-competitor relationships before materials are shared.

1. 49 words maximum. Which balance would you challenge first when finance labels all settlement cash available?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you test customer-money protection during a partner-bank outage?
3. 49 words maximum. What reconciliation break should reach the board before its monetary value becomes material?