Head of Business and Performance Insight – BPL in London

hackajob is collaborating with Barclays to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role. Head of Business and Performance Insight sits at the heart of the business, energising leadership focus, alignment and accountability. Supporting the CEO in preparing for leadership meetings so discussions are focused, high quality and outcome‑driven. Accelerating decision making and delivery on priorities that matter most. Providing disciplined business oversight and control, supporting decision making and execution pace on behalf of the Chief of Staff and CEO. It acts as the central integrator across strategy, execution, governance, and internal & external stakeholder management. Ensures that commitments are translated into clear decisions, delivered outcomes and tracked against OKRs. The office strengthens the management system and operating rhythm of the enterprise, raises the quality and sequencing of forums and data, and surfaces risks, dependencies, and trade‑offs early. Through trusted authority, commercial judgement, and structured follow‑through, the Chief of Staff Office enables the CEO and leadership team to operate proactively, consistently, and with confidence in a complex, high‑change environment.

Purpose of the role

To enable CEO effectiveness by strengthening strategic and commercial decision‑making through the provision of insightful analysis, clear framing of choices and trade‑offs, connecting strategy to partnership landscape, execution and measurable outcomes.

Accountabilities

• Provide strategic and commercial insight to help the CEO and leadership team focus priorities, make trade‑offs, and drive the best business outcomes.
• Track cross‑functional delivery against objectives and OKRs, ensuring progress, dependencies and performance are clearly measured and reported.
• Strengthen business cases and investment proposals by assessing value, risk, delivery confidence and expected benefits.
• Connect teams across Product, Sales, Finance, Risk, and Operations so decisions are aligned, practical and executable.
• Drive strong partnership governance, risk oversight and external engagement.
• Manage sensitive, high‑trust CEO office matters with discretion, judgement and control discipline.
• Deliver a high‑quality, service‑led CEO office, providing senior leadership ready materials (including commercial cases and performance updates) that enable the CEO and ELT to operate effectively and support the management of critical stakeholders.

Essential Skills / Basic Qualifications

• Experience in payments, fintech, digital banking or platform‑led businesses.
• Experience with strategic planning cycles (annual/quarterly) and performance systems.
• Track record of forming partnership and building business cases and supporting investment governance and prioritisation.
• Familiarity with performance management and MI design (KPIs/OKRs, balanced scorecards, dashboards).
• Experience of product‑led growth, go‑to‑market strategy and customer segmentation.
• Significant experience in strategy, commercial planning, business operations, transformation, corporate development and partnership management.
• Strong commercial acumen: ability to understand revenue drivers, unit economics, pricing, cost‑to‑serve, investment cases and delivery confidence.
• Experience leading cross‑functional initiatives end‑to‑end with measurable outcomes (pace, ownership, benefits and OKR tracking).
• Excellent analytical skills, ability to convert data into insight, narrative and decisions.
• Excellent stakeholder management with confidence operating with CEO/ELT‑level counterparts; able to challenge appropriately.
• High standards of judgement, confidentiality and discretion.
• Strong written communication: crisp synthesis, clear narrative and decision‑focused documents.

Barclays’ payments acceptance business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for both small businesses and domestic and international corporate clients. In April 2025, we announced a long‑term partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to grow and transform the payments acceptance business by broadening the range of services offered, enhancing the experience for both existing and prospective clients. Leveraging extensive client relationships and deep experience of UK payments, we will create an environment of continuous innovation – activated by Brookfield’s global private equity expertise in payments, technology, operational transformation and corporate carve‑outs – to ensure the business is strategically positioned for long‑term growth. Barclays will invest approximately £400m in the new business, the majority of which will be incurred during the first three years. Performance‑linked incentives will drive greater alignment between the partners, underpinning the long‑term commitment to the transformation. Barclays and Brookfield will work to create a standalone entity over time, continuing to use the Barclaycard Payments (BPL) brand and acting as the sole payments acceptance services provider to Barclays’ clients for a minimum of ten years.

Purpose of the role

To enable the success of senior executives by helping navigate complex challenges, make informed decisions and deliver against their strategic objectives.

Accountabilities

• Strategic support to senior executives, such as the CEO or other top‑level leaders including assistance in the development and execution of in‑year and multi‑year business strategy, research and analysis to support decision‑making and act as delegate for the senior executive in specific situations.
• Management of colleague engagement planning in line with the strategic direction, managing communication channels and ensuring effective coordination across different departments and teams.
• Management of key projects and strategic initiatives on behalf of senior executives, ensuring strategic projects are on track, monitoring of progress and provision of regular updates to the executive team.
• Improvement of operational efficiency, alongside functional partners, within the organisation including the identification of areas for improvement, streamlining of processes and implementation of consistently excellent best practices to enhance productivity and effectiveness.
• Development of performance reporting for key metrics that reinforce the strategic objectives of the division and support the external commitments made. Analyse and draw insight to drive performance.
• Involvement in aspects of financial analysis and budget management, including assistance in financial planning, forecasting, cost management and monitoring of financial performance against targets.
• Support to senior leadership to ensure appropriate resourcing across the business/function including planning and forecasting, partnering with HR to drive talent development and succession planning including the identification of high‑potential employees, provision of mentorship and guidance and support to leadership development and diversity initiatives.
• Support to the senior executive with risk and control oversight, escalation, crisis management and risk mitigation, support the development of contingency plans, coordination of responses to emergencies and ensure business continuity.
• Implementation of a robust governance framework which supports the board of directors, executive forums and governance committees through the preparation of board materials, organisation of meetings and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.

Director Expectations

To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide. They manage the direction of a large team or sub‑function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.

Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub‑function. Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately. Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence. Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate. Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives. Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up‑to‑date relevant sector / functional knowledge and insight into external market developments / initiatives. Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations. Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area. Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally. Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ business divisions. Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others. All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.