Michael Leary
Michael Leary joined SMBC MANUBANK in January 2022 and serves as Managing Director, Chief Risk Officer. In this role, he manages the overall direction and control of risk exposure for the bank and provides leadership and strategic direction regarding the risk framework, including oversight of all financial and non-financial risk as well as digital and non-digital operations. Michael is an accomplished banking professional with more than 30 years’ experience in risk management, regulatory oversight, consumer and commercial banking, and treasury operations.
Prior to joining SMBC MANUBANK, he served as the Senior Vice President of Payments Risk and Collections Infrastructure at U.S. Bank, where he successfully led cross-functional teams to implement world-class risk and fraud management tools for payments, merchant, and lending products. As Senior Vice President, Risk Strategies Execution Executive at Bank of America, Michael architected the bank’s Model Analytics Platform for complex analytics across consumer and small business risk management and implemented the bank’s first relationship-data-driven automated underwriting strategy in credit cards.
Other experience and accomplishments include working as a Supervising Examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and serving as a founding member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Derivatives Task Force. During his years at the FDIC he led exams across most disciplines, including Safety and Soundness, Information Technology, and Compliance. As a member of several industry advisory boards for risk management, decision science and bureau information, Michael is recognized as a leader in "identity proofing” and leveraging technology, data and decision science to support risk management. He also holds three patents related to banking technology.
Michael earned a Bachelor of Science degree from King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and has been a CFA charter holder since 1998. He is a founding member and serves on the Board of The Giving Tree, a Philadelphia, PA-based charity that develops the nation’s future charitable leaders, enabling their efforts to “give back” to their communities. An avid fan of all Philadelphia sports, Michael also enjoys playing the piano, reading nonfiction, and spending time with his wife and three children.