Head of Forecasting & Planning

Looking for a new challenge? Take a look at our current vacancies. If you see a vacancy that is right for you, we encourage you to apply! Exciting opportunity to join us as our Head of Forecasting & Planning.

Do you have previous experience in a leadership role where you’ve been driving insight and influencing senior leaders in large and/or complex environments? If so, please read on, this could be the next role for you.

Employment Type: Full-time

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

Reporting to: Director of Operational Performance & Planning

Salary: London salary from £95,325. Manchester & Coventry salary from £91,225 (dependent on experience)

Location: London docklands, or Coventry or Manchester. Our permanent hybrid policy sees us all working at least four days across a fortnight in the office.

About the role:

At the Financial Ombudsman Service, we make decisions on a range of complex and difficult issues. Every year we resolve hundreds of thousands of disputes between consumers or small businesses and their financial service providers – and if we believe a customer hasn’t been treated fairly, we can step in to put things right. As demands upon us have grown ever more complex, we now need an even stronger centralised operational planning, performance and insight function (OPP). To be effective, efficient and deliver excellent customer service, we need to be able to respond to the data and the insight it drives to improve decision making and efficiency.

As the Head of Forecasting and Planning, you will be responsible for our end to end Operational planning and resource allocation and deployment, from forecasting the demand we expect to receive across customer types and channels, to developing and delivering strategic workforce and short term capacity plans to meet this demand, and driving how we deploy our staff effectively, with colleagues with the right capabilities being in the right place at the right time, to ultimately drive delivery of the organisational customer service standards.

As an experienced leader, you will lead a set of forecasting and planning teams to develop best in class models that incorporate key information from internal and external sources and help deliver accurate and detailed demand forecasts and operational workforce plans. You will work in collaboration with Finance, HR, and our Operational directorates to develop these plans for the Operational teams in the service, and ensure we have skilled staff in the right place at the right time to effectively handle customer demand – through peaks and troughs in demand.

Key responsibilities:

• Forming and maintaining effective working relationships with your senior stakeholders – you’ll need to know when to challenge their ways of thinking to reach the best outcome.
• Organisational demand forecasts across customer and channel types for the end to end customer journey at the Financial Ombudsman Service.
• Capacity and capability focused strategic workforce plans for the organization to meet forecast demand.
• Developing and maintaining cross-functional relationships with Finance, HR, and Customer Operational Delivery teams to understand, refine and inform future workforce needs and any gaps that exist.
• Leading a team of forecasters and planners to drive short and long term operational plans.
• Identify the key priorities for analytical input across variables like demand, channel, productivity, attrition, referral rates, and resolution rates.
• Provide reporting and business insight to ExCo and the FOS Board on actuals vs forecasts against plans and budgets to drive changes to operational workforce plans in-year.
• Driving the measurement of transformation benefits and validating these post change programme delivery, including the incorporation of benefits into workforce plans.

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

• Experience working in a similar leadership role where you’ve been driving insight and influencing senior leaders and driving strategic planning in large and/or complex environments.
• Working with senior stakeholders and showing the ability to constructively challenge them to make improvements.
• Demonstrating strong collaboration and influencing skills to build and retain their trust and confidence.
• A strong communicator, with the ability to use data and reporting to drive oversight and assurance for senior leadership teams.
• Experience in managing and creating a high-performing team by leading, coaching, and developing individuals.
• A pragmatic, outside the box and logical thinker, with strong analytical and critical thinking skills to drive production of new insights and implementation of changes.

Desirable Criteria:

• Having a basic understanding of complaints case-handling processes would be desirable.
• Proven experience of using data and analysis to drive planning in a complex operational/delivery environment.

Why Financial Ombudsman Service?

We are a value led organisation. Our values define our culture, influence our decisions, and underpin our vision and strategy. They set out how we play our PART through Purpose, Ambition, Respect and Trust.

We also offer an attractive, competitive salary and flexible benefits to suit our people. Here’s a list of some of the many benefits and perks you can get for working with us:

• 25 days holiday entitlement, with the option to buy extra or sell days.
• Generous pension.
• Various Family Friendly Policies, including enhanced maternity pay, carers and dependants leave.
• Employer provided benefits such as Private medical insurance, virtual GP, Critical illness cover, Life assurance cover, to name a few.
• Choice of voluntary benefits including Technology scheme, Cycle to work scheme, Will-writing service amongst others.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Extensive opportunities for personal and career development.
• Nationwide gym membership discounts, and a fully equipped on-site gym open 24/7 in London.
• Extensive Well-being resources including on-site therapists (London office only).
• Beautiful and bright London office looking over the Thames and near to mainline stations.
• Our Coventry office is 2 minutes walk from the main station and Manchester is 7 minutes from Oxford Road station.
• 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.

How do I apply?

Please 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.

This advert will close at Midnight on Wednesday, 9th July 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 and will be provided to candidates shortlisted to the first stage of the assessment process.

We’re proud to be an inclusive employer. We view diversity as fundamental to our success and welcome applications from underrepresented groups across all communities. We’re committed to being a great place to work– attracting and developing people from the widest possible range of backgrounds. We want everyone to perform at their best and feel able to be themselves. We understand that if we’re diverse and inclusive, we’ll better understand different perspectives, which is fundamental to our job resolving financial complaints.

We welcome applications from Black and other ethnic minority candidates, and female candidates, for all positions and particularly so for senior leader positions as they are under-represented within the Financial Ombudsman Service at this level.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. This means that we will put disabled candidates entering under the scheme through to the next stage of the recruitment process should they meet the minimum criteria for a role. A minimum criterion needs to be measurable from reviewing a candidate’s CV/supporting statement. Exceptions may apply if due to the volume of applications we are not able to interview all eligible candidates who qualify under the scheme.

If you would like to speak to a member of our team about any reasonable adjustments you need, please email hrsupport@financial-ombudsman.org.uk and let us know your preferred method of contact.

Find out more! Check out below channels to find out more about everyday life at the Financial Ombudsman Service – and don’t forget to follow us while you’re there:

• LinkedIn: Financial Ombudsman Service
• Our careers page: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/join-us

Good luck with your application!