Head of Organisational Resilience in Gloucester

Working hours: 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday

Duration: Permanent

Location: Gloucester (Hybrid with occasional travel to Group locations)

Job Ref: 204986

About The Role

Benefact Group is looking for a Head of Organisational Resilience to join our Gloucester office. This is a high-profile, newly shaped leadership role with Group-wide reach and the primary purpose is to define and lead the evolution of organisational resilience in the context of an ever-developing range of threats. The role involves setting strategy, developing policy, and establishing execution frameworks within which the business must operate. It oversees the development of appropriate plans for testing in the development environment and ensures that these are integrated into a rolling programme of testing that improves overall operational resilience and enables the business to meet its regulatory standards. Analysis, planning and testing for all SBUs, business functions / departments, and Group Services functions are in scope.

You will help shape a culture of resilience – one that protects our customers and our charitable purpose, and that gives our colleagues confidence and capability ensuring that we can prevent, respond to, and recover from disruption to our critical services. The role is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders in first, second and third line to help oversee and manage operational risk and deliver and embed Operational Resilience practices in line with relevant regulatory expectations in the UK, EU and Canada, including Third Party and Change risk management. The role will manage a small team of specialists. The role is critical to ensuring that EIO operations remain resilient and able to recover quickly when required, ensuring that the business remains able to protect its customers, colleagues and the security of the business.

What you'll be doing

• Set and lead the strategic direction for organisational resilience, evolving frameworks into a mature, insight-driven capability to provide clear insight to executive leadership on resilience posture and priorities.
• Oversee the full suite of resilience assessments and testing regimes — including operational resilience, business continuity and third‑party resilience — to validate readiness and identify improvements.
• Lead the group’s crisis preparedness and response capability.
• Drive horizon scanning and threat assessment activity, ensuring emerging risks, regulatory expectations and industry trends are proactively understood and acted upon.
• Strengthen resilience maturity by championing continuous improvement, supporting site teams, and embedding resilient mindsets, behaviours and capabilities across the organisation.
• Provide robust oversight through governance forums, challenging risk and control compliance, addressing issues, and steering foundational and thematic resilience initiatives.
• Build capability across the Group – lead and develop a small specialist team.
• Coach, challenge and equip senior leaders and service owners across our business to take ownership of resilience in their areas.
• Drive measurable uplift in resilience maturity, culture and behaviours.

What you'll need to have

• Operational resilience experience within the Financial Services industry.
• Knowledge of FCA/PRA Operational Resilience regulations and implementation.
• Experience leading enterprise-wide resilience initiatives in complex organisations.
• Experience with stress and scenario testing.
• Business Continuity / Disaster recovery experience.
• Proven ability to influence executive stakeholders and balance regulatory, customer and commercial priorities.
• Confident communicator with the ability to build relationships, influence and challenge decision making.
• Proven leadership experience leading a team with a track record of demonstrating initiative and making decisions.
• Ability to travel occasionally & willingness to participate in out-of-hours crisis response as required.

What makes you stand out

• Knowledge of general insurance products and processes.
• Change and third-party risk management experience.
• Relevant qualifications.

What we offer

• A competitive salary - let's discuss it.
• Hybrid working.
• Group Personal Pension — up to 12% employer contribution.
• Generous annual bonus scheme: on-target bonus between 10% and 40%.
• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays, and a holiday buy and sell scheme.
• An array of health and wellbeing benefits, including private healthcare, income protection and life assurance.
• £200 annual personal grant to a charity of your choice.
• Encouraged to take at least one volunteering day per year.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Full study support to gain professional qualifications.
• Access to virtual GP.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.

Hear from the hiring manager

This is a high‑impact leadership role where you’ll shape the strategy, frameworks and testing that keep Benefact Group resilient in the face of an ever‑changing threat landscape. You’ll work with senior leaders across the business and lead a specialist team to strengthen our ability to withstand and recover from disruption, protecting our customers, colleagues and operations when it matters most.