Operational Excellence & Procedures Lead

About Allica Bank

Allica is the UK's fastest growing company - and the fastest-growing financial technology (Fintech) firm ever. Our purpose is to help established SMEs, one of the last major underserved opportunities in Fintech.

Established SMEs are the backbone of local communities - representing over a third of our economy - yet have been largely neglected both by traditional high street banks and modern fintech providers.

The Operational Excellence & Procedures Lead is responsible for driving continuous improvement across Operations, ensuring that operational processes, procedures, knowledge management and supporting technologies evolve in line with the Bank's growth strategy.

Sitting within the Operations - Financial Crime and Customer Experience function, this role acts as the bridge between Operations, Product, Technology, Risk and Change, ensuring operational processes remain efficient, scalable, customer focused and well governed.

The role goes beyond traditional business procedure management by including the adoption of AI-enabled solutions across Operations. The successful candidate will identify opportunities to automate manual activities, improve colleague productivity, enhance knowledge management and embed intelligent workflows that support better customer and business outcomes, while ensuring that the process for keeping procedures updated remains efficient and scalable.

This is a key role in shaping the future operating model of Operations, driving operational excellence, process optimisation and AI adoption to ensure Allica remains at the forefront of modern banking operations, with well mitigated operational risk.

• Lead process/procedure reviews across all operational functions, identifying opportunities to simplify, standardise and automate activities.
• Facilitate workshops to map, review and optimise end-to-end customer journeys and operational processes.
• Partner with operational teams to identify pain points, risks and inefficiencies, delivering practical and measurable solutions.
• Ensure operational processes remain scalable and aligned to the Bank's strategic objectives.
• Track and report on process performance metrics and continuous improvement outcomes.
• Support the successful operational embedding of new products, services, regulatory changes and technology enhancements.

• Maintain oversight of operational process documentation and procedure standards across Operations.
• Support Procedure Owners in maintaining accurate, compliant and version-controlled procedures.
• Own reviews and updates for central operations procedures, ensuring any updates are signed off by key business stakeholders and communicated to end users.
• Routinely review and update FAQs, seeking appropriate stakeholder signoff and publishing on the website.
• Ensure operational procedures remain aligned to Bank Policies, Risk Frameworks and regulatory requirements.
• Conduct impact assessments for product, technology and regulatory changes to identify documentation updates and operational implications.
• Attend Product, Change and Governance forums to ensure operational readiness considerations are captured.
• Facilitate procedure review activities and monitor closure of agreed actions.
• Promote best practice standards for process mapping, documentation and operational governance.

• Lead the adoption of AI capabilities across Procedures and Training to improve productivity, quality, colleague experience and customer outcomes.
• Design, develop and continuously improve AI-enabled workflows using approved technologies, including Microsoft Copilot and other emerging AI tools.
• Measure, track and report on tangible benefits realised through AI adoption and automation initiatives.
• Champion a culture of innovation and continuous improvement across operational teams.

• Support the successful delivery of operational change initiatives within the Operations department.
• Lead requirements gathering and discovery workshops with business stakeholders.
• Coordinate operational readiness assessments and implementation planning.
• Develop robust procedures and supporting materials to support change adoption.
• Maintain and continuously develop Management Information (MI) reporting across all areas of Operations, ensuring accurate, timely and meaningful reporting to support performance management, operational oversight and informed decision-making.

• Significant experience within Operational Excellence, Business Process Improvement, Procedure Management and Stakeholder Management.
• Strong process mapping and end-to-end process design capability.
• 2+ years of line management experience.
• Excellent understanding of operational governance, risk management and control environments.
• Experience identifying and implementing opera