Senior Intelligence Analyst

Senior Intelligence Analyst

The Intelligence Analyst – Merchant and Loyalty Rewards Integrity role sits within the Fraud Fusion Center (FFC). This role focuses on identifying, analyzing and escalating rewards abuse, gamification-driven manipulation, and emergent threats across Citi's credit card, checking, and broader rewards ecosystem.

The ideal candidate is intellectually curious, fast-learning, proactive, and able to synthesize intelligence from many inputs to identify risks early. They will be the connective tissue between intelligence, fraud strategy, product partners, and external institutions.

Responsibilities:

• Monitor and synthesize internal and external intelligence to identify emerging rewards-abuse schemes, including promotional abuse, manufactured-spend analogs, account linkage manipulation, referral or bonus gaming, and adversarial earn-and-burn strategies.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis to evaluate risk indicators, summarize patterns, and identify trends affecting Citi's rewards ecosystem.
• Assess at-risk accounts and behaviors, identify signals of potential abuse, and document findings clearly for internal partners.

Cross-Institution Engagement & Information Sharing:

• Serve as a liaison between the FFC and industry working groups, gathering insights on new reward-abuse tactics and mitigation approaches.
• Participate in external fraud/loyalty-abuse roundtables and information-sharing forums; bring intelligence back into Citi for action.

Internal Coordination & Escalation:

• Work closely with Fraud Policy & Strategy, Product Teams, Data Analytics partners, AML, Citi Security & Investigative Services, and other internal stakeholders to:
• Share emerging intelligence
• Coordinate assessments
• Drive awareness of new threats
• Support timely mitigation steps
• Assist with documenting processes, investigative flows, and escalation pathways for rewards-abuse incidents.

Process & Documentation Excellence:

• Maintain detailed investigative notes, intelligence summaries, and analytical artifacts within case-management systems.
• Support development of playbooks, best practices and process improvements relevant to rewards abuse detection.
• Ensure that investigative and analytic processes follow Citi standards and support the Fraud Fusion Center's operational model.

Operational Support & Prioritization:

• Balance day-to-day investigations with longer-term research initiatives.
• Prioritize assignments based on criticality, emerging risk and organizational needs.
• Escalate urgent issues when needed and assist with crisis-response workflows.

Qualifications:

• Required: 2–5 years of relevant experience in one or more: Rewards abuse investigation, Loyalty or credit-card rewards operations with exposure to abuse cases, Fraud investigations in card or retail banking, Financial crime analysis or intelligence roles, Experience identifying or analyzing manufactured spend (MS) or MS-adjacent flows
• Experience engaging with, monitoring, or researching forums, online communities, blogs, or groups where reward optimization, MS, arbitrage, and abuse tactics are actively discussed.
• Strong analytical ability to identify subtle indicators and emerging patterns across qualitative or semi-structured inputs.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to summarize complex information clearly.
• Highly curious, detail-oriented, and capable of independent judgment with limited supervision.
• Demonstrated ability to build cross-functional relationships.

• Preferred: Direct prior work in: Credit-card loyalty programs, Offer/promotion design or governance, Merchant-funded rewards ecosystems, Financial fraud investigations
• Exposure to fraud lifecycle concepts and risk management practices.
• Experience briefing leadership or participating in working groups.
• Familiarity with MS mechanics (e.g., gift card chains, pseudo-MS escalations, liquidation paths, partner loopholes).

Education:

• Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience

This job description provides a high-level review of the types of work performed. Other job-related duties may be assigned as required.