Ombudsman Leader

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Ombudsman Leader

Are you passionate about helping people be the best they can be? Do you know how to lead high-performing teams and support the resolution of complaints in a technical, evidence-based role?

Contract: Permanent

Working hours: 35 hours per week is full time. Where possible, we are open to considering part time/flexible working patterns. Please let us know in your application your desired working pattern.

Salary: London – £93,000 plus flexible benefits package, all other locations £89,000 plus flexible benefits package

Reporting to: Ombudsman Director

Locations: London, Coventry, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Cardiff, with occasional travel to our other office locations. Please let us know in your application the office location you would like to be considered for.

Our permanent hybrid policy sees us all working at least four days across a fortnight in the office.

The Financial Ombudsman Service is committed to making a difference to people’s lives and increasing confidence in the financial services industry. We make independent decisions on a range of complex and difficult disputes. And every year we resolve thousands of complaints between consumers or small businesses and their financial service providers.

This is an exciting opportunity to join us. You’ll lead our casework teams to ensure that our decisions are made with sound judgement, fairly and consistently, while helping us achieve our productivity, quality, and efficiency objectives.

Reporting to an Ombudsman Director, you will focus on a specific set of financial products. You will be accountable for leading the teams in your product area and play a vital role in ensuring our people deliver the best possible customer service. 

As a member of the Ombudsman Panel, you will help shape our policy and approach to cases in your product area – including issuing decisions on important cases – and ensure consistency of approach across the service. You will also represent the Financial Ombudsman externally to key stakeholders including industry, regulators, and consumer advocates.

You’ll have a flexible approach, a positive attitude to change, and demonstrable experience of successfully leading teams through change, and ensuring adoption and benefits realisation. You’ll act as a role model with a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to creating a high performance, trust-based culture. 

Key responsibilities

Your role is to:

• Lead and promote a culture of strong performance and personal accountability by setting and maintaining high standards and clear expectations for ombudsmen, ombudsman managers and investigators.

• Role-model our values every day through your leadership – providing a strong performance management culture and a clear strategic direction. Help your team to be the best they can be by focusing on their personal development and inspiring them to improve their knowledge and skills – now and for the future.

• Take pride in – and drive – a culture of excellent customer service, building an ethos of continuous improvement to achieve service standards. Where necessary, personally oversee service complaints and embed any subsequent learning within the team. Ensure customer service is responsive and assists diverse and vulnerable customers who may need specific support.

• Regularly coach and share feedback with your team to build confidence, knowledge, and capability, whilst actively managing performance and any other issues as in line with our policies and framework expectations.

• With your peers, lead on the development of a consistent approach to casework in your area and to any new and challenging cases.

• Cut through complexity by combining experience, evidence, and detailed analysis to drive informed, logical, fair, and objective answers and decisions across your team. Identify any potential issues and provide clarity on decisions to team members.

• Facilitate cross-team collaboration by being approachable, open, and transparent. Treat everyone with empathy, dignity, and respect, embrace diversity and work collaboratively.

• Collaborate with your Ombudsman Director and Ombudsman Leadership team to agree strategic goals, your own objectives and those of your team, in line with our overall service-wide performance outcomes.

• Work with the senior leadership team in your product area to measure and review overall performance and service delivery so that we can continually improve the way we work in line with current and future requirements.

• Allocate resources to ensure you meet or exceed performance objectives with a focus of efficiency, quality, cost, timeliness, and customer service while staying within headcount and budget constraints.

• Make and write timely, independent, and legally binding final decisions that are consistent, fair, reasonable, and impartial. Your decisions – and those of your ombudsmen – will be written in a logical, systematic, straightforward, and accessible way and will educate and inform others.

• Act as an ambassador for the Financial Ombudsman and build partnerships with regulators, businesses, professional networks and other stakeholders, while offering engagement, challenge and insight.

To be considered for this role, you’ll need to show us that you’ve got the skills and capabilities. You’ll have to have the following minimum criteria:

Minimum criteria

• Proven leadership experience, demonstrating the ability to inspire, motivate, and manage performance effectively and in building highly engaged teams in a customer-focused culture.   

• Demonstrable experience of supporting and leading change and implementing continuous improvement strategies, including through the adoption stages and to assuring benefit’s realisation.

• Strong alignment with organisational values, with a track record of developing teams, setting high performance standards, and achieving stretching targets.

• Significant experience in handling general casework, including complex cases. Expertise in making informed, impartial, fair, logical, and objective decisions, and producing clear, accessible written communications.  Have the ability to make key decisions on wide-reaching or sensitive legal/technical matters which may help shape our stance on specific issues in the future.

• Excellent interpersonal skills with a commitment to openness, transparency, and respect for diverse perspectives. Experience in fostering a collaborative cross functional team working environment as well as credibly representing an organisation externally to build partnerships.

• Proven ability to work with senior leadership to measure and review performance and service delivery. Strong organisational and resource management skills, meeting performance objectives within headcount and budget constraints.

Desirable Criteria

We would also like you to have the following:

• Knowledge of financial services or experience of working in dispute resolution or a regulatory environment

• A coaching qualification

Why Financial Ombudsman Service?

We’re a UK-wide service, with strong values and a diverse workforce, where you can be your authentic self. We’re committed to being a great place to work and to recruiting people from all backgrounds. So, as well as a competitive salary, we offer a great package of benefits, including:

• Core benefits: generous pension, life assurance, critical illness cover, income protection, personal accident cover, private medical insurance, virtual GP.

• Optional benefits: travel insurance, technology scheme, cycle to work scheme, dining and lifestyle memberships, dental cover.

• Holiday entitlement of 25 days, with the option to buy or sell extra days.

• Discounts on your everyday shopping, from groceries and petrol to household goods and gift vouchers

• An Employee Assistance Program offering professional support with legal, health and money issues.

• Opportunities for personal and career development

• Our Networks Our employee led networks (a couple of examples being our Women's Network, Carers network, and Neurodiverse Network) do fantastic work in educating and raising awareness across a range of experiences and support us in being an inclusive employer and a great place to work. You can get involved, too! 

How do I apply?

• Upload your CV, which should highlight relevant skills and experience and explain any gaps in your working life.

• Use the supporting statement box to demonstrate how you meet the minimum criteria.

If you get through the initial screening round successfully, we’ll invite you to an online assessment.

Applications need to be submitted by 11:59pm on Sunday 2nd February 2025

Due to high application numbers this advert may end earlier than the date specified, so please don't delay and apply now!

A full job profile is available on request which we will provide to candidates shortlisted to the first stage of the assessment process.

We’re proud to be an inclusive employer.

Reflecting the communities we serve helps us provide the best service to our customers. Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our success, so we welcome applications from women and other under-represented groups. As part of our commitment to the Race at Work Charter, we welcome applications from Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority candidates.

We’re proud to be a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader. This means that we will put disabled candidates through to the next stage of the recruitment process as long as they meet the minimum criteria for a role. (Exceptions may apply if we have so many applications, we can’t interview all the candidates who qualify under the scheme.)

If you’d like to speak to us about any reasonable adjustments you need, please email Recruitment@financial-ombudsman.org.uk and let us know your preferred method of contact.

You can find out more about our Diversity and inclusion strategy and plans on our website where you can also read our 2022 Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing report.

Good luck with your application!