Head of Risk and Control, Starling Bank
1st Line of Defense Operations
1-5 days a week in office
Mobile-first bank offering personal, joint and business accounts
Posted today
Mobile-first bank offering personal, joint and business accounts
1001+ employees
Posted today
1-5 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To solve our customer's problems - and build the best bank in the world.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience (10+ yrs) leading operational risk or control function in a regulated UK bank, preferably digital or high-growth
- Deep understanding of FCA/PRA requirements, particularly around Consumer Duty, SM&CR, and Resilience
- Strong knowledge of core operational areas (payments, servicing, lending, financial crime)
- Proven track record building 1LOD control functions and influencing executive stakeholders
- Strategic mindset with the ability to translate risk frameworks into practical controls
- Confident operator at Executive level
- Analytical and data-driven, able to create forward-looking insights and early warning mechanisms
- Effective communication and leadership ability to drive results - in particular, candidate should be able to lead and drive results across products and functions absence of reporting line
- Highly resilient, pragmatic, and delivery-focused in fast-paced or ambiguous environments
What the job involves
- Reporting To: Chief Control Officer
- As our Operations continue to scale and evolve, we are looking for an experienced and strategic leader to step into the role of Head of Risk and Control – Operations
- This is a critical opportunity to lead the 1st Line control agenda across our internal operations, helping us maintain a resilient, customer-centric, well-governed environment that is ‘Fit for the Future’
- You’ll work closely with teams across Payments, Customer Servicing, Lending, Financial Crime Ops, and Onboarding, helping to identify and manage risk, embed controls, and build operational maturity
- This is a chance to shape our control culture from within — and deliver tangible impact as we grow
- Own and embed the 1st Line Risk and Control Framework across Operations (Payment Operations, Customer Servicing and Complaints, Financial Assistance, Business Banking Operations, and Customer Onboarding & KYC, and Financial Crime Operations) aligned with Enterprise Risk Framework and regulatory expectations
- Own operational RCSAs, KRIs, control design and testing, and incident remediation frameworks
- Develop risk dashboards and real-time control environment metrics
- Ensure operational areas are resilient and ready for regulatory scrutiny (Consumer Duty, SM&CR, SS1/21)
- Provide challenge and oversight on operational change, AI adoption, outsourcing and workflow automation
- Build a high-performing team and coach the wider operations leadership on risk capability and culture
- Work with Compliance and Legal to interpret and translate regulatory obligations and reporting requirements into operational and actionable working practices
- Support regulatory engagements, s166s, and independent assurance reviews
Application process
- Closing Date: Friday 11th July, 12pm
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Starling started life focused on consumer banking, it has since found most of its success by competing in the business banking space. Its caught up with Tide and beaten the likes of Monzo and Revolut to a more complete offering for businesses.
This progress resulted in the company receiving a £100M grant in April 2019 from a body created to boost competition in SME banking, which it has used to accelerate building a full suite of digital banking products: intelligent forecasting tools, and digitally-enabled relationship management functions, as well as lending products. Since then, it has gone on to raise significant rounds of funding with leading investors such as Goldman Sachs.
As well as continuing to expand in the UK, its expanding in Europe. And its imminently launching an international bank in Dublin, which has allowed it to offer its current account across the European Union post-Brexit
Banking for small businesses has historically been ignored, even though the experience is poor. Starling is in tune with knowing what its customers want, and continues to build out its range of third-party products within its banking app thanks to support from its open API. Having achieved profitability, it currently has 26 integrations, including Xero, but that figure continues to grow.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 11 rounds)
Apr 2022
$178.4m
LATE VC
Jun 2021
$47.9m
LATE VC
Total funding: $1.2bn
Company benefits
- Time off: 25 days holiday, plus your birthday as an extra freebie. You can also opt out of bank holidays and take them when works for you!
- Health insurance: Private health insurance with Vitality Health, one of the UK's leading private medical insurers
- Pension scheme
- Paid volunteering leave: We encourage all our employees to give back. You can take up to 16 hours paid leave a year, specifically to help causes meaningful to you
- Gym & cycle to work schemes: We offer discounted gym memberships and cycle to work schemes through salary sacrifice
- Perkbox: For a wide range of retail, entertainment and leisure discounts (as well as cash back) at a huge variety of businesses
Company HQ
Spitalfields, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Anne Boden
(Founder)Held senior roles in finance over a 30 year career, including COO for AIB and Head of EMEA for RBS. Was CEO of the company for 9.5 years.
Raman Bhatia
(Group CEO)Previously CEO of OVO, Board Member at Bud, Head of Digital Bank (UK) at HSBC and VP at HouseTrip, among other roles.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Starling Bank
Manuela Torrijos-Simon (Group Financial Controller)
- In the spirit of Aiming for Greatness and Doing the Right Thing, we want to be the bank with the best approach to Diversity and Inclusion
- The Always Open Forum at Starling empowers employees to come together and own their areas of interest, supporting their agenda both internally and externally
- The forum creates a safe space for conversations about all Diversity and Inclusion topics, with the spotlight currently on 3 focus areas; Race and Ethnicity, LGBTQ+ and Mental Health.
- We’re about to launch a new group to support Disability, and all of these teams help bring Starlings together to improve our workplace
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