UK CFO Governance & Strategy Lead

The Governance Manager will support the UK CFO in ensuring robust governance, oversight, and control across the UK finance organisation. This role includes leading coordination of governance forums, maintaining oversight of key finance risks and actions, supporting ICARA and wind-down planning activities (including associated governance and project management), and driving high standards of accountability, decision-making, and documentation across the function.

The role requires a highly organised and commercially aware individual who can operate effectively across senior stakeholder groups, bring structure to complex topics, and ensure the UK finance team maintains strong governance in a fast-paced and regulated environment.

• Governance and Committee Management
  • Lead the planning, coordination, and smooth running of UK finance governance forums, committees, and working groups chaired or attended by the UK CFO.
  • Prepare high-quality meeting materials including agendas, papers, action logs, decision logs, and minutes.
  • Ensure governance forums have clear terms of reference, objectives, participants, and escalation routes.
  • Track actions and decisions to completion, ensuring accountability and timely follow-up with stakeholders.
  • Drive consistency in governance standards, templates, and documentation across the finance organisation.
• Executive and Board Support
  • Support the UK CFO in preparing materials for Executive Committees, Board meetings, Audit Committees, and other senior governance forums.
  • Coordinate inputs across Finance, Risk, Compliance, Legal, and the wider business.
  • Review papers for quality, clarity, and completeness before circulation.
  • Prepare briefing points, summaries, and key messages for senior leadership meetings.
• Risk, Control, and Oversight
  • Maintain oversight of governance actions, finance risks, control issues, remediation plans, and audit or regulatory commitments.
  • Support governance and delivery of ICARA (tracking assumptions, risks, scenarios, outputs).
  • Oversee wind-down planning governance, including ownership, timelines, and milestone delivery.
  • Support governance of the annual external audit, including deliverables, requests, findings, and remediation tracking.
  • Ensure appropriate escalation and accountability for actions.
  • Collaborate with Risk, Internal Audit, Compliance, and Financial Control to maintain a strong control environment.
• ICARA, Wind-Down, and Regulatory Governance
  • Support governance processes linked to ICARA and wind-down planning (inputs, documentation, approvals).
  • Manage ICARA and wind-down as structured programmes (deliverables, dependencies, timelines).
  • Support governance of the annual audit process, including tracking timelines and cross-functional inputs.
  • Coordinate responses to audit findings and ensure remediation is owned and delivered.
  • Coordinate responses to regulators, auditors, and internal control functions.
  • Maintain governance artefacts (committee calendars, ICARA docs, wind-down plans, policy logs, decision records).
  • Promote adherence to internal governance policies and continuous improvement.
• Planning and Coordination
  • Build and manage an annual governance calendar aligned to Board, committee, audit, ICARA, and reporting cycles.
  • Coordinate ICARA, wind-down, and audit timelines alongside broader finance deliverables.
  • Apply strong project management discipline across ICARA, wind-down, and audit activities.
  • Identify opportunities to improve governance processes and reporting quality.
  • Support strategic and ad hoc projects for the UK CFO and finance leadership team.

• UK CFO
• Head of Regulatory Finance
• UK Finance Leadership Team
• Global Financial Controller
• Risk and Compliance
• Wider UK business stakeholders

• Experience
  • Experience in governance, COO, finance operations, business management, or chief of staff roles in financial services or a regulated environment.
  • Experience supporting senior executives and governance / Board / ExCo processes.
  • Experience with ICARA, wind-down planning, or similar regulatory programmes (highly desirable).
  • Strong track record of managing complex, cross-functional regulatory or finance projects.
  • Experience supporting or coordinating external audits, including managing timelines, requests, and stakeholder engagement.