Senior Lead - Complaint Outcomes

Location: Leicester or Bexhill (hybrid)

Welcome to Hastings Direct. We’re a digital insurance provider with ambitious plans to become The Best and Biggest in the UK market. We’ve made huge investments in our data and tech capabilities over the past few years, along with nurturing our 4Cs culture. We’re proud of the journey we’re on as a company and know that our continued success will rely on the contribution of our talented colleagues.

We provide insurance for over four million customers, but we know there’s even bigger opportunity out there. The fact you’re now reading this job advert means we’ve tempted you to find out more about #lifeatHD – we really hope you like what you see, and you’ll join us to share in the success of the exciting chapter that lies ahead.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they feel they tick every box. If you’re excited about joining us and think you have some of what we’re looking for, even if you’re not 100% sure we would love to hear from you.

Role overview

As our Senior Lead for Complaint outcomes, you’ll lead complaint oversight across areas of the business where complaint ownership sits outside of the central Complaints function. This role is critical in ensuring customers receive fair, consistent and high-quality complaint outcomes, regardless of where their complaint is managed. You’ll provide robust oversight and governance of complaint closures completed by operational teams and third-party suppliers, ensuring outcomes meet our highest standards, regulatory requirements and customer expectations. You’ll also be accountable for creating visibility of complaint quality, identifying emerging risks, challenging poor outcomes and driving sustainable root cause improvements across Retail Operations, Claims Operations and our strategic suppliers.

Job details – you’ll need to have demonstrable experience in:

• Complaints Oversight and Governance – leading the oversight framework for complaints resolved outside the central function, providing independent review and assurance of complaint closures, ensuring complaint decisions, customer outcomes and redress are fair, consistent and aligned to FCA and Consumer Duty expectations, creating and maintaining robust quality assurance and governance processes across all complaint closure activities and identifying and escalating conduct, customer outcome or regulatory risks.
• Supplier Complaint Oversight – providing oversight of complaints resolved directly by key suppliers including repair networks, vehicle replacement providers and any other customer-facing partners, ensuring our strategic partners are delivering complaint outcomes consistent with our high standards, challenging supplier decisions where they don’t meet these, implementing oversight mechanisms to monitor complaint quality, consistency, timeliness and customer outcomes, establishing regular performance and governance reviews with suppliers and ensuring complaint learning and trends are embedded within the supplier process.
• Quality and Customer Outcomes – owning the quality framework for complaints resolved outside the central Complaints function, developing and embedding quality standards, calibration processes and outcomes reviews, delivering regular thematic reviews to identify inconsistencies and areas for improvement, working closely with operational leaders to improve complaint decision-making capability and driving consistency of complaint handling and customer outcomes across multiple areas of the business.
• Root Cause and Continuous Improvement – leading complaint root cause analysis across operational teams and suppliers, identifying recurring drivers of complaints, poor customer journeys and process failures, influencing operational and supplier leaders to take ownership, ensuring complaint insights translate into measurable reductions and driving improvements across key customer journeys.
• Influence and Stakeholder Management – building strong relationships with senior leaders across various business areas, acting as the recognised expert on complaint quality and customer outcomes, providing robust challenge where customer outcomes fall below expected standards and influencing decision making at a senior leadership level.
• Regulatory and Conduct Risk – ensuring complaint management practices support compliance with FCA DISP requirements, Consumer Duty, Treating Customers Fairly principles and internal conduct risk frameworks, identifying emerging regulatory risks and implementing appropriate controls.

Essential skills/experience:

• Extensive experience within operational complaints leadership within a regulated financial services or insurance environment.
• Strong understanding of motor and/or home claims operations highly advantageous, with experience of working with third-party suppliers and outsourced service providers.
• Significant experience of assessing complaint quality, customer outcomes, managing complaint governance, oversight and/or assurance functions.
• Proven track record of driving complaint reduction and root cause improvement activity.
• Strong understanding of FCA complaint handling requirements and Consumer Duty from a leadership and accountability perspective.

The interview process:

• Recruiter intro/screening call.
• 1st stage interview with hiring leader.
• 2nd interview with hiring leader's leader.

As a Disability Confident employer, we’re committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are fully inclusive – what this means to you is if you’re applying for a job with us, you’ll have fair access to support and adjustments throughout your recruitment journey. We also welcome applications through the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS). For more information on the DCS, please visit our inclusive business page on our careers website.

Regrettably we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

Benefits:

• Flexible working – we champion a flexible hybrid working approach – please speak to your recruiter to discuss in more detail.
• Competitive bonus scheme - all colleagues are eligible for our annual 4Cs performance bonus.
• Physical wellbeing – as a Band 4 colleague, Hastings pay for you to receive private medical Insurance (also known as PMI). This gives you flexibility and convenience to see a specialist or consultant and allows you to decide when and where you will be seen.
• Financial wellbeing – as well as providing you with 4x your salary with our life assurance cover, income protection at no extra cost, and matched pension contributions up to 10%, we are proud to provide you with an award-winning package which includes discounts, cashback, free independent mortgage advice and free access to financial wellbeing support.
• Mental wellbeing programme – we have the thrive mental health app, our colleague assistance programme available 24/7, our own in-house mental health first aiders, support groups and a dedicated team to make sure we are covering your needs.
• There's more! – 27 days annual leave + bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell one of your weeks, access to our health care cash back plans, dental plans, discounted health assessments, Cycle to work and tech schemes, discounted and free onsite facilities, social events throughout the year and much more...

Join us and you’ll find a different way of doing things. We call it the 4Cs. We focus on getting it right for our colleagues, customers, company and community. As one of our colleagues, you’ll be helping to drive our growth, so in return, we’ll give you all the support, training and development you need. Our 4Cs principles are simple: we believe by creating the right culture for our colleagues and giving them the right tools to do their job, we’ll deliver good outcomes for every customer, helping us to grow the company profitably and sustainably and allowing us to invest in the communities we serve.

Hastings Group is an equal opportunities employer which means we treat people fairly. We welcome applications from all suitably skilled persons regardless of their gender, age, race, disability, ethnic background, religion/belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or marital/family status. Please also note that we have a thorough referencing process, which includes credit and criminal record checks.

At Hastings Direct, we’re committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, we encourage you to be open with us. Our recruitment team is here to provide the support you need to ensure a fair and accessible experience for all.