The Client
Spaceship is an upscaling fintech organisation that has experienced significant growth and transformation since its inception in 2017 when it launched with a mission: to transform the way people think about and invest their money for the future.
The Challenge
With increasing capital and robust forecasted future growth, the focus was to ensure that the risk appetite and culture were in alignment with their growth plans. To ensure their commitment to a robust risk culture and compliance standards remained in place as the business grew, the executive team recognised that they needed another senior executive leader and peer at the table to advise on organisational risk and compliance with a depth of knowledge and experience in superannuation, regulation, fintech and driving commercial outcomes through healthy risk strategies.
Working in partnership with the executive team, Kaizen Recruitment was engaged to recruit a Chief Risk Officer (CRO) in the Sydney market to lead and support the business as it continued its upward growth trajectory.
This newly scoped executive CRO position was essential as increasing regulatory market pressures put financial services organisations under pressure.
The ideal candidate needed to be an expert in both superannuation and funds management risk and compliance while also understanding the unique fintech nature of the space.
They would be required to map out a strategic organisational risk framework and work with external regulators to ensure Spaceship’s risk and compliance were fit for purpose.
This executive position required a strong ability to design, implement, and roll out new products/services within a risk and compliance framework.
Lastly, this ideal candidate needed to have experience across large transformative financial services organisations which could bring the best industry risk practices to the business while also searching for a candidate who would understand the niche part of the market Spaceship plays in.
Kaizen Recruitment: Process and Solution
Before the engagement, Kaizen Recruitment had partnered closely with this business, running a broad market search mapping out the Australian superannuation and funds management market, and consulting the Spaceship executive team on what emerging trends we as an agency were seeing.
As an established, specialised, executive search firm, Kaizen targeted those within our existing networks whilst running an external marketing campaign. We also sought referrals from respected industry leaders in the space and used highly specialised head-hunting tools to ultimately act as an extension of Spaceship’s brand in the market, bringing the role to the attention of those most suited to the position, facilitating a confidential discussion and advocating for our client as an employer of choice in a shallow and highly specialised pool of qualified candidates.
Our Director – Legal, Risk and Compliance, Amanda Chisholm, was able to quickly identify and shortlist seven highly respected and qualified candidates in her network for the position. All candidates on the shortlist had met Spaceship’s criteria and came from a mix of superannuation and funds management backgrounds ranging in experience from present executive-level candidates to Heads of Legal and Risk verticals looking to take that next step into a CRO-level position.
Further market data on salaries and bonus structures were compiled during our research process, supplementing our existing database which was supplied to assist with the benchmarking, offer and negotiation process.
Kaizen Recruitment managed a professional, highly targeted, and timely search process partnering with the CEO, assisting with interviewing, reference checking, providing the offer, sharing feedback to both parties along the way and assisting with negotiations resulting in a successful appointment of their new CRO Maan Beydoun.
About Spaceship’s Newly Appointed CRO
Maan is a deeply qualified financial services risk management professional. He has a breadth of experience with more than 20 years of in risk and compliance roles across superannuation trustees, funds management, and financial services regulators as well as his previous role in a financial services FinTech. Maan served as the previous CRO at Flare HR as well as holding the Head of/Leader of Risk and Compliance position for Institutional Wealth at Mercer for two years and worked within the Australian regulators for more than 10 years developing deep regulatory SME.
Maan is a genuine and considered leader which has served him extremely well while leading a business through challenges and navigating the risk and compliance landscape and the organisation he serves. Maan’s depth of experience combined with his calm and consultative demeanour make him perfectly suited for the newly created CRO executive position at Spaceship. We wish him every success in his new role.
