Head of First Line Risk; Operations

This role is responsible for managing First Line Risk across the Chief Operating Office (COO) function. The Head of First Line Risk and Incident Management will design, implement, and embed an effective risk management model and culture within the COO. Additionally, they will oversee the identification, management, and resolution of business incidents, ensuring coordinated response and remediation plans when risks materialise.

This senior role sets the strategic direction for First Line Risk, Incident Management, and Remediation across the Nucleus group. Leading a team of Risk Managers, Incident Managers, and Remediation Analysts, the role ensures a proactive approach to risk management within the COO function.

Key responsibilities include developing governance, reporting, and assurance processes to enhance risk visibility, escalation, and control. The role also leads business coordination during incidents, keeping senior stakeholders informed and ensuring effective response and resolution. A strong focus is placed on minimizing customer, reputational, financial, operational, and regulatory impact while ensuring timely remediation of any customer detriment within risk appetites.

You’ll spend your time :

• Designing and implementing the First Line Risk operating and governance model across the COO function, working closely with senior leadership to integrate risk management strategies into day-to-day operations.
• Identifying and reporting on systemic issues through root cause analysis and risk assessment and working with risk and control owners to implement remediation plans and track and report on their effectiveness
• Overseeing the regular review of our first line risks, controls and key risk indicators to assess their ongoing adequacy and effectiveness
• Collaborating with process owners and relevant stakeholders to develop and implement enhancements to operational processes and controls
• Providing regular reporting to senior management highlighting trends, performance metrics, and management of high impact risks, events and issues
• Driving a culture of continuous improvement, fostering awareness and accountability for proactive identification, monitoring and management of risk across the COO Function
• Working closely with second line risk to support oversight and reporting and ensure alignment with our business risk framework
• Ensuring compliance with relevant regulatory requirements, industry standards, and internal policies

• To agree and drive the strategic direction of Incident Management and Loss Assessment activities for Nucleus
• Manage early identification of potential incidents, ensuring the team responds quickly when events occur
• Act as point of escalation for significant incidents for senior management
• Ensure a rigorous process for incident management is in place, with ownership and regular monitoring (from incident response through to post incident review and root cause analysis)
• Development and maintenance of management information reporting as necessary
• Providing communication through verbal and written updates to key stakeholders up to and including the Executive Risk and Compliance Committee
• Monitor incidents to ensure that all Service Level Agreements are respected.
• Drive good technical outcomes for loss assessment calculation, ensuring customer detriment is rectified within our risk appetites.
• Ownership of root cause analysis on all incidents, with clarification on details and gaps in risk and control framework linking to incident
• Clear action plans and identification of business ownership to support implementation of controls for future prevention.
• Analyse metrics and reports on the performance of the incident management process.
• Responsible for maintaining a view of industry incident management best practice and for sharing that as appropriate with leaders across the business
• Provide coaching and support to build team knowledge and skills
• Ensure good relationship management with internal and external stakeholders
• Continuously role model Nucleus’ values, and inspiring others to do the same
• Responsible for managing your own delegated workload, you will have…