Director, Risk and Compliance

Who we are at GMF:

At the Green Municipal Fund (GMF), we create change where it matters most—in Canada’s municipalities.

As the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ flagship program and backed by a $2.4 billion endowment from the Government of Canada, GMF helps Canadian municipalities, big and small, invest in their future by supporting homegrown sustainability and resilience projects that work for Canadians by creating jobs, lowering costs, and strengthening local economies.

Through our unique mix of funding, resources and training, GMF is enhancing the quality of life for people in Canada by accelerating a transformation to sustainable and resilient communities.

Since 2000, GMF has invested over $1.6 billion in local projects helping communities avoid 2.9 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, while also contributing $1.24 billion to the national GDP and creating more than 13,000 person-years of national employment.

About This Role:

The Director, Risk and Compliance provides independent, second-line risk and compliance oversight for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Green Municipal Fund and Climate Programs (GMF) lending activities and evolving financing tools. The role brings advanced knowledge of lending structures, credit and financial risk management, loss-control principles, regulatory compliance, and leading risk management practices. It also supports the development of tools, resources, policies, training and monitoring required for effective financial risk management. The role takes a forward-looking approach to risk and compliance, anticipating how emerging climate priorities, financing models, market practices and regulatory developments may affect GMF and FCM’s broader climate programming, and takes appropriate action to ensure that these implications are well understood and addressed, with alignment across key leaders on the response.

The role is responsible for identifying, assessing, measuring and monitoring risks associated with lending activities, new financing products, investment vehicles and blended finance initiatives, as well as the controls established to manage those risks. The role provides independent risk advice and challenge, identifies emerging risks, and advises management and relevant committees on credit, market, operational and other material risks. The role supports strategies to mitigate risk and losses at the individual transaction and portfolio levels while balancing impact objectives with compliance, capital preservation and long-term financial sustainability. In this capacity, the role provides objective risk and compliance advice on lending strategies, program design and evolving financing approaches. This includes assessing the associated costs, benefits, risks, regulatory considerations and operational implications in the context of FCM's business requirements, program objectives and long-term strategy.

The role develops, recommends and maintains corporate risk policies, standards and compliance programmes relating to FCM’s nearly $2 billion lending, financing, and investment activities from GMF and other climate program financing activities, including the Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Program. It contributes to the governance and oversight of credit and financing risk policies, promotes consistency and standardisation across credit, market and operational risk practices, and provides independent risk advice and oversight for workout scenarios. The role also participates in and presents to relevant management and FCM and GMF board-level committees.

Given FCM’s mandate as a not-for-profit organisation and its Government of Canada-funded mandate to support municipal projects with environmental benefits, the role must balance development objectives with risk and financial considerations. This helps ensure that the funds and programmes achieve their objectives while maintaining financial sustainability and meeting contractual requirements, including applicable minimum fund-balance requirements.

What you'll be doing:

Key Responsibilities

• Establishes the risk and compliance position on material lending, financing and investment matters within the role’s mandate and determines when issues require escalation, additional mitigation, external expertise or executive and committee consideration, and ensures appropriate action is taken.

• Provides objective risk and compliance advice to management on credit and lending related risks, including the costs, benefits, risks and regulatory implications of proposed lending strategies and program design.

• Develops and maintains risk frameworks, policies and governance approaches for innovative financing activities including blended finance, and advises management and committees on risk allocation, portfolio diversification, capital preservation and financial sustainability.

• Acts in second line of defense capacity to review loan underwriting, credit risk rating methodologies and loan credit assessments to ensure material risks are identified and appropriately addressed prior to review by relevant management and FCM and GMF board-level committees.

• Provides independent risk advice and oversight regarding problem accounts, corrective strategies and workout scenarios.

• Develops and maintains lending risk policies, procedures, and standards to ensure sound risk management practices in line with FCM’s risk profile.

• Maintains risk management standards through identification of key risk controls, key risk indicators, and measurement and reporting of tangible risks affecting the organization arising from lending activities.

• Works jointly with related business units to articulate lending policies and procedures, standards, and risk-management guidelines, keeping abreast of any changes.

• Leads the calculation of key risk metrics including the Excess and Total Capital Adequacy Ratios, Mandate Capacity, and Management Base Case.

• Provides portfolio risk management reporting summarizing portfolio insights to relevant management and FCM and GMF board-level committees.

• Provides leadership in risk and compliance and ensures overall credit risk within the loan portfolio is in line with FCM’s risk appetite.

• Acts as the Compliance Officer under FCM’s AML Compliance Policy.

• Develops and maintains FCM’s compliance program regarding applicable FINTRAC regulation.

• Promotes financial risk and credit practices that consider current and emerging risks across relevant operations.

• Identifies when external legal, regulatory, financial or risk expertise is required and engages actively with external advisors as appropriate to inform program and product design. Assesses and incorporates their advice into risk and compliance recommendations with overall program and corporate strategy.

• Serves as the lead coordinator for relevant management oversight committees, ensuring material risks, portfolio performance issues, fund sustainability considerations and required management actions are appropriately reviewed, escalated and monitored.

• Provides independent risk oversight and challenge for the existing portfolio as well as the design of new financing products, blended finance transactions, investment structures and partnerships, including associated financial, operational, compliance, reputational and strategic risks.

Knowledge and Experience

• A minimum of 15 years of progressive experience in risk management on the credit risk/lending side, including 5 years in a leadership role in a business environment, preferably in the banking, development and/or non-profit sector.
• University degree in Business, Finance, or Accounting. MBA or a master's degree is considered an asset.

• In-depth knowledge of lending processes and products, credit risks and mitigation techniques, policy and practices.

• Sound understanding of the financial and business marketplace, laws and regulations and risk issues affecting the financial services industry, with particular focus on proactive management of current and future potential issues impacting on lending and credit risks of businesses, including reputational risks.

• Demonstrated knowledge of blended finance, impact investing, development and infrastructure finance, structured finance, public-private financing partnerships, and investment fund governance or portfolio management.

• Experience applying risk management practices to innovative financing instruments, capital mobilization approaches, and partnership-based investment structures.

• Highly advanced ability to liaise with individuals across a wide variety of operational, functional, and technical disciplines.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, and demonstrated knowledge in credit, market risk and operational risk measurement and management arising from lending activities.

• Strong communication, presentation and technical writing skills with the ability to translate complex risk, financial and compliance issues into clear and actionable advice to senior leaders. Ability to adapt their language and communication for non-technical audiences without specific expertise in risk management and compliance.

• Self-starting, adaptable and comfortable taking on new challenges.

• Demonstrated ability to manage time and budgets, with strong leadership and team building skills.

• Bilingualism in English and French would be considered an asset.

Additional Information

• This posting is for an existing position

Salary Range:

$127,342.00 - $144,942.00

What we offer:

We offer a flexible work model grounded in accountability, collaboration, and delivering results. It is designed to support both performance and well‑being. While work is primarily virtual, occasional travel to our Head Office in Ottawa is expected. The majority of the team is based in the National Capital Region.

Where applicable, you may also have opportunities to travel across Canada to engage with the communities we support and better understand the impact of our work.

Employee experience and supports:

We are committed to creating an environment where people can do their best work while maintaining a healthy balance including:

• Flexible work arrangements that support productivity and collaboration
• Summer schedule (July 1 to Labour Day):
  • 7-hour workdays
  • Fridays off, aligned with team and operational needs
• Ongoing commitment to employee development
• Comprehensive range of employee benefits and services designed to support employee wellbeing and development. Please note: details and eligibility may vary depending on the role
• Modern office space in Ottawa’s ByWard Market and downtown core

We’re committed to fostering an organizational culture that embraces equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging, where individuals from diverse racial and ethnic identities, ages, nationalities, social economic status, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression and physical and mental abilities can thrive and be fully engaged at their best level.

We welcome and encourage applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the recruitment and selection process.

The future of work at FCM includes a hybrid work model; therefore, this role will be a combination of virtual and on-site work. The successful candidate is required live within 80kms of downtown Ottawa, unless otherwise specified, and be authorized to work in Canada.

As part of our recruitment process, we use automated artificial intelligence tools to screen applicants. All AI-generated assessments are reviewed and validated by our People and Culture team.

In closing....

If this role speaks to you and the impact you want to make, we’d love to hear from you!

We thank all candidates for their interest; however, only those selected to proceed to the next stage of the recruitment process will be contacted by a member of our People and Culture Team.