Risk & Controls Oversight Senior Lead - Retail & Wealth Risk

As a Risk & Controls Oversight Lead – Retail & Wealth Risk, you’ll be responsible for overseeing risk and control across Retail customers being referred for Investment and Wealth products, ensuring that key risks are effectively identified, understood, and managed. This includes maintaining a great focus on customer outcomes, helping to prevent issues such as mis‑selling, poor advice, unresolved complaints, and inconsistent delivery of Consumer Duty expectations. You will assess risks linked to product suitability and proposition design, ensuring products are appropriate for their target audience and deliver fair value. You’ll also support the management of advice boundary and referral risks, ensuring clear and effective controls are in place across Barclays UK – Prive Bank and Wealth Management interactions and that the distinction between guidance and advice is maintained.

Oversight of sales and distribution practices will form a key part of the role, including monitoring risks related to incentivisation and ensuring consistency across digital, telephony, and branch channels. In addition, you’ll help ensure that marketing and target audience selection are appropriate and aligned with regulatory expectations. The role includes monitoring compliance with ring‑fencing requirements and supporting the effectiveness of service management reviews, as well as overseeing risks within digital channels, including customer journeys, routing, accessibility, and overall omni‑channel experience. You’ll also play a key role in identifying and addressing any non‑compliance with retail banking and wealth regulations across products, communications, and referral models. Alongside this, you will support robust governance and clear accountability across Retail, Wealth, and Prive Bank and Wealth Management, ensuring that risks are appropriately escalated and challenged where required, helping to maintain a robust and well‑controlled environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Knowledge of business areas, products, processes and platforms to assess risk.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the bank and business units to improve overall control effectiveness through documentation of control assessments, procedures, and findings.
• Identify and investigate potential weaknesses and issues within internal controls to promote continuous improvement and risk mitigation aligned to the bank’s control framework.
• Develop reports to communicate key findings from risk assessment, including control weaknesses and recommendations to control owners, senior management, and other stakeholders.
• Execute reviews to determine the effectiveness of the bank's internal controls framework aligned to established and evolving policies, regulation, and best practice.
• Implement adherence to the Barclays Controls Framework and set appropriate methodology of assessing controls against the Controls Framework.

Qualifications and Experience

• Good understanding of Retail Banking Customer Journeys to identify and manage associated risks and controls.
• Ability to balance risk management with business goals when defining Risk Appetite, and effectively influencing or negotiating with stakeholders on risk acceptance.
• Conduct active deep dives and risk assessments for active risk management.
• Well‑versed in market trends, competitor activities, and the broader risk environment, using this knowledge to enhance internal controls.
• Experience influencing senior stakeholders including Managing Director level.
• Ability to design and implement the Risk strategy in line with the overall vision of BUK Customer and Digital function.
• Subject matter expertise and experience delivering transformation and change in risk management.

Additional Highly Valued Skills

• Self‑motivated with the ability to work independently while contributing effectively within a team of risk specialists.
• Capable of applying expertise in Retail and Wealth risk within the context of Customer & Digital, ensuring tailored solutions for this area.

Purpose of the Role

To assess the integrity and effectiveness of the bank’s internal control framework to support the mitigation of risk and protection of the bank’s operational, financial, and reputational risk.

Vice President Expectations

• Contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change.
• Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and address breaches of policies/procedures.
• Define jobs and responsibilities, plan for the department’s future needs, counsel employees on performance and contribute to pay decisions/changes.
• Lead specialists to influence operations of a department in alignment with strategic and tactical priorities, balancing short and long term goals and ensuring budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements.
• Demonstrate leadership behaviours that create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver consistently excellent standards.
• As an individual contributor, serve as a subject matter expert, guide technical direction, lead collaborative multi‑year assignments, train and coach less experienced specialists, and provide information affecting long‑term profits, organisational risks, and strategic decisions.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management, on functional and cross‑functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, supporting the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation’s functions to contribute to achieving business goals.
• Collaborate with other areas to support business activity and strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought, selecting complex alternatives and engaging in in‑depth analysis to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Seek out, build, and maintain trusting relationships with internal and external stakeholders to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

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.