Head of PMO in London

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 23,000 employees spanning over 56 countries. People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work/life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

The Head of PMO leads the central PMO function within Howden’s Project Delivery Team (PDT), ensuring robust governance, effective portfolio oversight, and consistently high delivery standards across a complex and rapidly expanding project landscape. Operating within Group IMO, the PDT plays a critical role in driving organisational change. Our team of Project Managers and Business Analysts supports both Group Functions and Business Areas, delivering strategic initiatives such as regulatory programmes, M&A integrations, and target operating model transformations. The PMO function includes a pool of PMO Analysts who are assigned to major programmes or embedded within Group to support the Transformation Wheel. As multiple project delivery teams operate across Howden, we have now been mandated to standardise PMO practices across the Group.

Key Responsibilities

• PMO Leadership & Strategy: Review and continuously enhance the PMO vision, operating model, and service catalogue to support Howden’s ambition to build a high performing Centre of Excellence for project delivery. Set standards for project management, reporting, governance, benefits management, and milestone tracking across the portfolio. Promote a culture of transparency, no surprises delivery, and proactive risk management.
• Portfolio Governance & Assurance: Work with other PMO functions to set the Project Delivery Framework ensuring all projects follow consistent processes, templates, and governance controls. Oversee project approvals, change requests, PIDs, health checks, and closure reviews. Lead monthly and quarterly governance cycles including Monthly Reporting, PSR QA cycles, and quality assurance of all project artefacts. Partner with Group PMO, TMO and divisional PMOs to ensure alignment on standards, minimum controls, and reporting expectations.
• Portfolio Management & Reporting: Maintain portfolio visibility across all PDT-supported work. Lead monthly/quarterly reporting and insights, ensuring data accuracy and commentary consistency. Ensure reporting aligns to various governance committees. Drive continuous improvement in milestone quality, dependency tracking, and benefits realisation.
• Capability, Tools & Continuous Improvement: Act as senior SME for our Project Management reporting tool, ensuring the tool supports Group-wide visibility. Develop PMO competencies, coaching PMO Analysts and raising capability across the wider PM / BA communities of practice. Identify opportunities to streamline processes, automate reporting, and implement best-practice PMO methods.
• Stakeholder Management & Collaboration: Build strong relationships with Programme Directors, Project Managers, BA Leads, Finance, Compliance, and Executive sponsors. Represent PDT PMO in Group wide governance bodies, forums and cross functional working groups. Ensure PMO provides a high quality business partnering service to project sponsors and delivery teams.
• People Leadership: Lead, develop, and mentor a multi level PMO team, ensuring clear role expectations, progression paths and performance management. Support recruitment activity and manage capacity planning aligned to the portfolio. Foster a collaborative, inclusive, high performance environment.

What are we looking for?

Essential: Proven experience leading a PMO in a complex, multi workstream environment (preferably financial services, insurance or regulated industries). Strong grounding in project/portfolio governance, risk management, RAID control, and assurance. Excellent analytical and reporting capability, with experience owning senior level reporting packs. Demonstrable ability to influence senior leaders, challenge constructively, and drive quality. Experience with modern PMO tooling. Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands on leadership when needed. Experience working across globally distributed project environments.

Desirable: Exposure to major transformation programmes. PMO or project management certifications.

What do we offer in return?

A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us: Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new. We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges. We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond.

Reasonable adjustments: We’re committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours or hybrid working. If you’re excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.