Richard Hills is the head of K2 Integrity’s office in the UAE and a senior managing director based in Abu Dhabi. With more than 25 years of experience in law enforcement and the mitigation of risk in both regulatory and regulated environments, Richard uses his knowledge of exponential technologies, innovation, and analytics to embed data-driven decision making in strategies to improve fraud and financial crime procedures, processes, and controls. With particular experience championing organizational change on both the cultural and technical level, Richard works with financial institutions to assess risk, optimize control frameworks, and drive digitalization in support of digital transformation.
Prior to joining K2 Integrity, Richard worked for HSBC in Dubai, UAE, most recently as head of risk assessment for EMEA, where he managed the embedding of the risk assessment subfunction in financial crime compliance, delivering the assessment of financial crime risk for HSBC in Europe and the MENAT region. In addition, Richard managed a multifunctional team responsible for risk stewardship of transaction monitoring risk assessment, financial crime analysis, and applied analytics, delivering analytics strategies and aligning financial crime risk, growth objectives, and resources.
Earlier in his career, Richard worked at the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) in Pretoria, South Africa, where he developed strategies, models, and algorithms to detect fraud, corruption, and money laundering, embedding advanced analytics in qualitative reports in support of law enforcement investigations. Prior to the FIC, Richard worked at the Serious Economic Offences Unit (SEOU), where he managed investigations into serious economic offences including fraud, corruption and money laundering, often involving mutual cooperation in criminal matters between international law enforcement and judicial agencies.
Richard received his M.Sc. from the University of Liverpool with a focus on web sciences and big data. He holds an executive certificate in strategy and innovation from the MIT Sloan School of Management and is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), and a Certified Advanced AML Risk Management Specialist (CAMS-RM).
