Sr. Lead Transfer Agency; UKTA) Operations

About Northern Trust As a global leader in innovative wealth management, asset servicing, asset management and banking services, Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) is proud to guide the world’s most successful individuals, families, corporations and institutions. Since 1889, we have aligned our efforts with our three guiding Principles That Endure:
Service, Expertise, and Integrity. Together, they reflect the three cornerstones of business conduct which we strive to instill in our employees, whom we call partners, and to provide to our clients and the communities we serve worldwide. With more than 135 years of financial experience and over 24,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

The Sr. Lead UK Transfer Agency-Operations position is a critical individual contributor role within UK Transfer Agency (UKTA), accountable for operational leadership, service delivery, governance and control oversight across UK, Ireland and India activity.

The role supports the Head of UKTA by leading BAU operational management, maintaining an effective control environment, driving regulatory compliance, supporting client and prospect engagement, and delivering strategic priorities across service, risk, efficiency and transformation.

The role has senior operational accountability across a multi-location UKTA operating model, supporting complex fund administration and shareholder servicing activity across onshore, nearshore and offshore teams.

The role requires oversight of high-volume, time-critical BAU activity, regulatory obligations, client change, operational resilience events, service-critical processes and cross-functional stakeholder management.

The role is expected to operate as a senior escalation point, trusted adviser and accountable owner for operational execution, ensuring the function remains scalable, controlled and aligned to UKTA, regional and global Transfer Agency strategy.

Key accountabilities include:

Operating model and transformation:
Lead the evolution of the UKTA regional operating model, partnering with TA executive leadership to scale processes, simplify activity, implement automation and deliver strategic change initiatives. Risk, control and governance:
Maintain a robust operational control environment, ensuring that risks, incidents, breaches, audit findings and control gaps are identified, assessed, escalated and remediated in line with governance expectations. Regulatory and compliance oversight:
Ensure operational processes remain aligned to relevant regulatory obligations, including CASS, AML/FCC, Consumer Duty, operational resilience, data privacy and applicable fund administration requirements. Client and stakeholder engagement:
Support RFPs, prospect presentations, due diligence activity, new business onboarding, existing client engagement and senior client escalations on behalf of UKTA Operations. Escalation and issue management:
Act as a senior escalation point for regulatory, operational, service and client-impacting matters, ensuring decisions are appropriately framed, documented, escalated and resolved with urgency and control. Business continuity and resilience:
Support business continuity activity, operational management of outages, SLA-critical incidents and operational resilience events, ensuring clear ownership, communication and recovery discipline. Industry and governance representation:
Represent UKTA in relevant internal governance forums, client meetings, executive updates and external industry forums, ensuring the operational perspective is clearly articulated

The ideal candidate should have a fair amount of the following skills & experience:

Senior operational leadership:
Significant experience in Transfer Agency, fund administration, asset servicing, investment operations or a comparable regulated financial services environment.

Transfer Agency expertise:
Detailed understanding of end-to-end Transfer Agency operational processes, including dealing, registration, settlement, distributions, commissions, investor servicing and operational oversight.

Regulatory awareness:
Strong knowledge of collective investment schemes, Authorised Contractual Schemes, Long Term Asset Funds and relevant regulatory frameworks, including CASS, AML/FCC, Consumer Duty, operational resilience and data privacy.

Control and risk judgement:
Strong judgement in operational risk, issue management, incident resolution, root cause analysis and control…