The Head of Assurance is a new role and will be a key element of the business’ control and oversight function. It is a global role, responsible for maturing, designing, overseeing and growing a consistent and comprehensive assurance testing and oversight approach.
This will include a framework for monitoring, testing, reporting, governance and escalation, and interacting with existing risks and controls frameworks. It is also an exciting opportunity to build a team and demonstrate and develop team leadership skills. The Head of Assurance will report into the Head of Risk and Regulatory.
The role will require you to:
•Build and lead a team of assurance testing experts with a broad range of expertise
•Manage and proactively enhance global assurance and testing framework. This will include maturing, developing and maintaining a combination of controls, training, risk assessment, policies, procedures and management information
•Apply judgement and use a risk-based approach to assessing and testing internal risks facing the business, and also those that arise from relationships with third parties, and controls around them
•Develop and manage a programme of assurance testing covering regulated entities globally
•Prepare and deliver assurance methodologies and outputs to relevant audiences (peers, compliance leadership, executive committee, board of directors) highlighting key initiatives, regulatory trends and areas of concern.
•Act as an internal subject matter expert on assurance and testing
•Share knowledge on internal trends and wider industry developments within the compliance department
•Manage and provide mentorship to junior team members within controls functions
•Provide training to teams on existing and emerging assurance and testing insights
•Build a network within product and client-facing teams to enable you to remain up-to-date on changes in the wider business (products, jurisdictions etc.). Act proactively to assess how these may integrate with the assurance and testing framework
•Provide constructive and clear feedback to team members’ queries on assurance matters
•Team Management
Skills and Experience:
•The successful candidate will have a background in risk/controls/assurance in financial services. Ideally this will be EMI or payments institution experience
•An understanding of ‘what good looks like’ for assurance frameworks, drivers of risk, controls and industry good practice
•Experience of building and developing assurance frameworks (in first, second or third line context or as an external consultant)
•Strong attention to detail and excellent organisational skills
•Good understanding of control design assessment and effectiveness testing techniques and practices