Nikhil Shah is Head of Risk at Kriya, focusing on risk management strategies and operational processes.
We recently caught up with Nikhil to chat about a typical week working within the Risk team, exciting new projects he is focusing on and general life at Kriya.

Tell us about your role and how it impacts Kriya's mission

Within my position, I am responsible for various types of Risks assessment at Kriya with the key focus being on credit risk and fraud.

My role is incredibly varied and can involve shaping our Risk policies, collaborating with Data, Product and Tech to build risk models and solutions, managing 3rd party vendor relationships with data vendors and supporting our Commercial and Capital Markets team with any risk related aspects of managing internal / external stakeholders.

The Risk team

The Payment Risk team currently comprises myself and 2 Risk Specialists that work a hybrid role between Risk Operations and Analytics.

The wider team is headed up by our Chief Risk Officer and consists of 18 teammates who focus on portfolio management, underwriting, financial crime and credit strategy.

What a typical week looks like

On Monday, we have a quick team catch up to ensure the team is aligned on the week’s priorities ahead. We’d also usually have a sync with the Data or Ops team to also align on priorities. I then catch up on all the Slack, Confluence, JIRA messages and emails that have come through since Friday afternoon and create a to-do list for myself for the week ahead and get started on the smaller items to gather some momentum.

Tuesdays we’re in the office and we have a bunch of different meetings. This includes our Payment cross-functional Squad meeting where everyone in the squad across different competencies come together to give an update on their progress overall and activities in the past week. We also have a team meeting to go into more depth about any workstream that we need to brainstorm and think through. We also have a company lunch so a great time to socialise with the rest of the team.

On Wednesday, I tend to work from home, and I block out half of the day for reading and absorbing information and the other half of the day for project-based work. This could include loss rate analysis, developing risk policies or conducting a review of our merchants.

The team tends to meet again in the office on Thursday for our company Townhall. I tend to have external meetings with vendors as well as my weekly 1:1s with the team and my manager on this day. Once again, we’re lucky to have the company lunch to socialise and maybe some drinks after work on the rooftop, which is great especially in the Summer!

Friday, I tend to spend similar to Wednesday and like to set aside time for project based work however I can often get quite hands on with applying some of our policies through providing limits assessment for customers or transaction monitoring. This allows me to gain first-hand experience which proves valuable when shaping policy to account for practicalities.

What’s unique about working within the Risk team at Kriya:

The most unique thing about working within the Risk team at Kriya is that you are given the responsibility to shape the business and implement impactful strategies. The ever changing internal and external environment means you constantly are finding new and innovative ways to identify and mitigate risks.

What tools do you rely on to organise your work?

 Google Suite, Slack, Confluence, Sublime, JIRA and whatever else I can!

What do you enjoy the most about working at Kriya?

My favourite thing about working at Kriya is the relationships that you build with colleagues. The environment allows for you to be yourself and as a result the working and social relationships can prosper.

Interested in working at Kriya?

Then we’d love to hear from you! Check out our careers page for any open vacancies and get in touch. Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn to hear about any new open positions and keep up to date with company news.