Head Of Risk Assurance – Mortgages & Financial Wellbeing

We’re a Building Society. That means we are owned by, and run for, our customers who have their mortgages, savings, or current accounts with us. We were founded with a strong underlying social purpose, to help people save and buy homes of their own. We continue to be guided by this same social purpose today, as we implement our Blueprint for a Modern Mutual - “Banking, but fairer, more rewarding and for the good of society.”  It’s an exciting time as we evolve to a new future that sees us accelerate delivery of our strategic aims, value to our 15 million Members and engage colleagues around new ways of working.

As Head of Risk Assurance, this role provides a compelling opportunity to become part of the Mortgages & Financial Wellbeing (M&FW) Business function; building a society where everyone has a decent place to call home and growing confidence for the future.

We’re looking for a talented individual to provide strategic leadership of our Risk Assurance agenda, working closely with the Governance Risk & Control Director, Senior Leadership Team, as well as partners across the Society’s 3 Lines of Defence and UK Regulators.

Your role will include evolving and optimising our approach to assurance across our mortgage, insurance and protection journeys to ensure our customers receive fair and consistent outcomes; continually improving our testing and feedback approaches; simplifying governance and reporting; and supporting the Senior Leadership Team in identifying root causes and actions to drive sustainable improvements to customer outcomes.

More broadly, as a new role within the Business Operations Directorate of M&FW, you and your team will enable the wider business unit to execute against our strategy namely through:

-Bringing together the holistic business unit vision and priority outcomes

-Providing independent challenge and support to drive performance, risk and controls

-Defining our customer, broker and landlord experience through journeys and processes

-Shaping and delivering our colleague enablement and engagement strategy and plan

-Leading our business change and business readiness agenda

We’re keen to appoint a collaborative and progressive leader with a demonstrable track record of driving improved performance, growing capability and diverse talent, someone with exceptional stakeholder engagement and enterprise leadership skills, who can bring fresh thinking and develop new ways of working.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, at one of our offices. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

What you’ll be doing

In this role, you will lead and inspire a diverse team of assurance colleagues, creating a compelling vision and developing a short- and long-term colleague strategy that uplifts performance and maximises potential, creating a sustainable and open culture where people act objectively and maintain independence.

You will be accountable for the design, implementation and management of the business unit assurance frameworks covering outcomes testing, quality assurance and quality controls, evolving best practice in line with central guardrails and guidelines, ensuring our customers receive fair and consistent outcomes and all key customer harm risks are assessed.

You will work closely with partners across the lines of defence to develop and embed consistent standards of outcome and quality assurance testing.

You will drive continuous improvement of our testing and feedback approaches to drive efficiency and effectiveness within the team and across the wider business unit, supporting leadership team members in identifying root causes and actions to drive sustainable improvements to customer outcomes.

You will be accountable for the evolution of our outcome testing approach to an industry leading model where testing can be completed end to end meeting our internal guardrails and external regulatory standards.

You will be accountable for the design and execution of effective Executive reporting, providing insights and actionable recommendations to risk and control forums.

About you

As a minimum you will need:

• Proven, outstanding leadership skills and experience with the ability to gain the trust of and manage the performance of individuals at a range of levels (influencing up to Executive level), including the ability to coach and give effective development feedback.
• Strong desire and ability to drive the team to produce work to the highest standards that can withstand robust challenge where appropriate.
• A thorough understanding of the Society’s overall business and strategy and comprehensive knowledge of how to design and implement effective and proportionate assurance strategies and frameworks, coupled with practical experience of implementing and continuously improving outcomes testing and quality assurance processes.
• In-depth knowledge of relevant mortgage, general insurance and protection regulation (and codes). It would be highly advantageous if you have a significant technical/ specialist knowledge in the areas of Consumer Duty and Vulnerable customers.
• Significant experience of having worked in a regulated environment within Financial Services, either in an assurance or business risk function or similar
• Excellent communication skills, written and verbal including proven negotiating, facilitation and influencing skills.
• Significant domain expertise in Mortgages & Financial Wellbeing, with strong understanding of member needs, internal policies and processes and regulations in these market segments

Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these.

• Say it straight - This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.
• Push for better - This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.
• Get it done - This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome.

We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole. We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16%
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year
• Life assurance worth 8x your salary
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Access to an annual performance related bonus
• Access to training to help you develop and progress your career
• Gympass – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• 30 days holiday, pro rata
• Status car allowance 
• Individual healthcare cover

What makes us different

Nationwide is the world’s largest building society. With over 15 million customers, we have a relationship with almost a quarter of the UK’s population. We’ve got the scale to compete with the big banks, but we’re not a bank.  
 
As a building society, we’re owned by our members – that’s our customers who have their current account, mortgage or savings with us. It means we can do things differently to deliver our Purpose – Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society.  
 
When you work at Nationwide, you can experience that difference for yourself. You’ll be part of a high-performing, purpose-driven organisation that offers rewarding career experiences and a highly competitive range of benefits to match. You’ll also be joining us at an important time as we seek to reach more and more people in the UK. We want everyone in the UK to know that they don’t have to bank with a bank. They can choose a modern mutual instead.  

What to do next

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up to date CV and answer a few quick questions for us.

We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.

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