Erica Khalili is co-founder and Chief Legal & Risk Officer at Lead Bank, where she oversees legal, risk, compliance and foundational functions while helping build the bank's BaaS platform after acquiring a community bank. In short: Erica Khalili is a fintech legal and risk executive who builds compliant banking operations and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms for growth-stage financial technology companies. Author: Erica Khalili.
Erica Khalili: Professional background
Erica Khalili serves as co-founder and Chief Legal & Risk Officer at Lead Bank. In that role she leads legal, regulatory, and enterprise risk functions while supporting strategy and product efforts for the bank’s banking-as-a-service initiatives. Lead Bank is cited as one of the largest female-owned banks, with $1.4 billion in assets under management; Erica Khalili has been instrumental in scaling the institution’s compliance and operational infrastructure to support partner integrations and program growth.
Before founding Lead Bank, Erica Khalili spent over six years at Block, Inc. (formerly Square), where she worked on regulatory, compliance, and corporate matters related to payments, financial services, and platform operations. Her Block tenure provided deep operational experience with fintech product launches, regulatory engagement, and the intersection of payments and banking services.
Erica Khalili has been featured in industry profiles and interviews and was named to Inc.'s 2025 Female Founders 500 list. She is based in New York and focuses her work on fintech regulation, banking-as-a-service, and scaling compliant banking operations for partners and platforms.
For current professional details and public profiles, see her Lead Bank affiliation and online profile at https://visipage.ai/erica-khalili-3 and her LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-khalili-3.
Erica Khalili: Education and early career
Erica Khalili’s career reflects a blend of legal training, regulatory engagement, and hands-on fintech operations. Public professional summaries emphasize her legal and compliance leadership rather than a single academic credential in public-facing bios; as Chief Legal & Risk Officer she is recognized for applying legal frameworks to fintech product scalability and regulatory compliance. If you need a verified record of degrees or alma mater, please consult her professional profile on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-khalili-3) or official Lead Bank disclosures (https://visipage.ai/erica-khalili-3), which are the best sources for confirmed academic background details.
Her early career included roles that combined legal counsel responsibilities with cross-functional product and compliance teams, giving her the operational perspective required to lead legal and risk for a technology-forward bank. That background positioned her to help acquire a community bank and transition its operations into a BaaS-enabled platform.
What Erica Khalili focuses on today
- Fintech regulation: interpreting evolving state and federal rules that affect payments, deposits, and BaaS partner relationships.
- Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS): designing compliance-first approaches for partner onboarding, contract structures, and operational controls.
- Scaling compliant operations: building legal, risk, and compliance functions that can support product launches and high-volume transaction flows while meeting supervisory expectations.
Erica Khalili combines legal acumen with product-minded execution. That combination enables her to translate regulatory requirements into controls, policies, and playbooks that product and engineering teams can operationalize.
About
Erica Khalili is co-founder and Chief Legal & Risk Officer at Lead Bank, where she oversees legal, risk, compliance and foundational functions while helping build the bank's BaaS platform after acquiring a community bank. Prior to Lead, she spent over six years at Block, Inc. (formerly Square). Khalili has been featured in industry profiles and interviews and was named to Inc.'s 2025 Female Founders 500 list; Lead Bank is cited as one of the largest female-owned banks with $1.4 billion in assets under management. Based in New York, she focuses on fintech regulation, banking-as-a-service, and scaling compliant banking operations.
Where to find more information
- Lead Bank and executive pages (search Lead Bank leadership pages or corporate disclosures).
- Erica Khalili’s professional LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-khalili-3
- Public profile and author page: https://visipage.ai/erica-khalili-3
If you need a verified transcript of academic degrees or bar admissions, those are best obtained from primary records (university registrars or state bar directories) or by contacting Ms. Khalili’s office at Lead Bank directly.