Banking & Treasury Function
Role definitions and reporting structure
Organisation: Golden Suisse / GCB Suisse AG, Zurich
Roles defined: Head of Banking & Treasury · Treasury Manager
Reporting: Head of Banking & Treasury reports to the CEO
Reporting structure
CEO
└─ Head of Banking & Treasury — banking relationships (primary focus)
Role— Head of Banking & Treasury
Reports to: CEO
Direct report: Treasury Manager
Title alternatives: Head of Banking Relationships · Director of Banking & Treasury
Base: Stockholm, Zurich, London, Munich or Dubai
Role summary
Owns the company’s access to the banking and payment system. The core mandate is to source, build, deepen, and defend relationships with banks, EMIs, and payment/crypto partners across jurisdictions — so the group always has reliable, redundant, well-disposed banking, despite operating in a category many banks avoid. Day-to-day treasury execution is delegated to the Treasury Manager; this person sets direction and steps in on the hard, relationship-heavy, and high-stakes work.
Core responsibilities
Banking relationships — primary focus
• Source and open new banking, EMI, and payment-partner relationships; maintain enough redundancy that no single institution is a point of failure.
• Build genuine, trusted relationships with relationship managers, compliance officers, and decision-makers — the people who decide whether an account stays open.
• Own the company’s “bankability” narrative: present the business credibly and keep documentation and story coherent as the group evolves.
• Identify which institutions actually have appetite for precious-metals and crypto-adjacent clients, and cultivate them ahead of need.
Correspondent banking
• Establish and maintain correspondent banking relationships (nostro/vostro accounts) to enable direct multi-currency, cross-border settlement and reduce dependence on intermediary payment chains.
• Manage the correspondent due-diligence process end to end — Wolfsberg questionnaires, RMA / SWIFT key exchange, and the ongoing AML obligations specific to correspondent relationships.
Defending and maintaining relationships
• Proactively manage de-risking / de-banking exposure: anticipate periodic reviews and respond fast and completely to EDD requests, KYC refreshes, and source-of-funds and transaction queries.
• Keep banks comfortable so reviews don’t escalate into account closures; treat every query as relationship maintenance.
• Maintain a contingency plan if any key account is frozen or closed, so operations don’t stop.
Crypto / stablecoin banking access
• Secure and protect the fiat banking and on/off-ramp partners that tolerate USDC/USDT flows — typically the hardest accounts to obtain and keep.
• Manage how the crypto side of the business is presented to traditional banking partners.
Card scheme membership (Visa / Mastercard)
• Lead the process of obtaining and maintaining Visa and Mastercard Principal Licenses (Principal Membership), enabling the group to issue and/or acquire directly rather than depend on a third-party BIN sponsor or program manager.
• Leverage direct contacts within Visa and Mastercard to navigate scheme onboarding, due diligence, certification, and ongoing membership obligations.
• Coordinate the licensing, capital, and compliance prerequisites that Principal Membership requires, working alongside the card, legal, and compliance teams.
Commercial terms
• Negotiate fees, limits, settlement terms, and service levels across the banking stack.
Oversight of treasury execution
• Direct and supervise the Treasury Manager, who runs payments, account administration, intercompany liquidity, and reconciliation.
• Set approval limits and controls; ensure segregation of duties beneath them.
Governance, reporting & AI
• Report banking status, risks, and concentration exposures to the CEO.
• Interface with compliance/legal on AML and regulatory obligations.
• Apply AI and automation where it streamlines the team’s reporting, monitoring, and documentation workload.
Profile / requirements
• Strong, current network in Swiss/EU banking and payments — ideally with existing relationships at institutions open to this client profile.
• Background as a relationship banker, corporate banking/treasury lead, or similar — someone who has opened and kept difficult accounts.
• Demonstrated experience opening and maintaining correspondent accounts (nostro/vostro), including the associated due-diligence burden.
• Familiarity with SWIFT relationship mechanics (RMA, message types) and correspondent-banking AML expectations.
• Fluent in bank compliance expectations (AML, EDD, source-of-funds) — able to speak the risk team’s language and pre-empt concerns.
• Credible and presentable at a senior level; this person represents the company to banks.
• Comfortable with precious-metals and crypto/stablecoin businesses and how banks view them.
• Strong negotiator; discreet and trustworthy.
• German + English given the Zurich base; further languages a plus for cross-border relationships.
• Able to lead a small team (the Treasury Manager) and set controls.
Nice-to-have
• Prior experience getting or keeping banking for a high-risk-category business (crypto, precious metals, EMI, payments).
• Existing EMI / payment-partner / correspondent-banking contacts.
• Familiarity with gold-linked / asset-backed settlement models.
Authority & limits
Reports to and is overseen by the CEO. Holds authority to develop banking relationships and negotiate terms within parameters set by the CEO. New banking relationships and commitments above defined thresholds require CEO sign-off. Sets and enforces approval limits and segregation of duties for the Treasury Manager beneath them.
Where the difficulty lies
Payment execution is largely mechanical and well-suited to the Treasury Manager role. The genuinely hard, survival-critical work is staying banked at all: a private Swiss non-bank combining precious metals flows sits in the category banks de-risk. The senior role exists to obtain, maintain, and defend banking access — a relationship and credibility job, not an operations one.
Candidate pool
The Head of Banking & Treasury is the harder of the two to hire. The profile blends relationship banker, compliance-fluent dealmaker, and someone with an actual network — ideally with correspondent-banking experience, which operates at the level of a financial-institution banking lead. People who can reliably keep a precious-metals-plus-crypto business banked are scarce; the role should be framed and compensated as senior and network-dependent.
Suggested success metrics (senior role)
• Number of live, redundant banking relationships maintained at all times.
• Zero unplanned loss of critical banking access.
• Lead time secured before any account is identified as at risk.
• Correspondent / on-ramp relationships established and kept in good standing.