Portfolio Director 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 Portfolio Director is accountable for the strategic oversight, governance, and performance of a portfolio of capital-funded projects and initiatives. A core focus of the role is to define, embed, enforce, and continuously assure adherence to Portfolio and Program Management (PPM) minimum standards across the portfolio to ensure consistent, high-quality delivery, transparency, and investment discipline. The Portfolio Director operates and matures a Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) practice, enabling effective prioritisation, funding, execution, and value realisation aligned to enterprise strategy. The role provides regular, high-quality portfolio reporting and independent quality assurance to support executive decision-making and delivery confidence.

Key Responsibilities

• Define, own, and continuously improve PPM minimum standards applicable to all capital-funded projects and initiatives.
• Ensure PPM standards are embedded, understood, and consistently applied across the portfolio through governance, tooling, and capability uplift.
• Establish and operate portfolio-level quality assurance and assurance reviews, including health checks, gate reviews, and independent assessments.
• Provide clear escalation and intervention mechanisms where standards are not met.
• Act as the responsible owner for portfolio compliance with agreed delivery, financial, and governance expectations.
• Integrate with broader Group-wide governance to ensure alignment and effective resource prioritisation.
• Own the regular portfolio reporting cadence, providing accurate, timely, and insight-driven reporting to executive and governance forums.
• Produce consolidated views of portfolio health, risks, dependencies, financials, capacity, and benefits.
• Ensure reporting focuses on outcomes, value, and investment performance, not just activity.
• Continuously improve reporting standards, dashboards, and management information to enhance decision-making.
• Design, implement, and operate a Lean Portfolio Management practice aligned to enterprise strategy and funding models.
• Enable lean budgeting, investment guardrails, and capacity-based planning across the capital portfolio.
• Drive prioritisation, sequencing, and funding decisions based on value, risk, and strategic alignment.
• Optimise flow of work across the portfolio by actively managing dependencies and constraints.
• Provide senior oversight of portfolio delivery performance across all capital-funded initiatives.
• Proactively manage portfolio-level risks, issues, interdependencies, and delivery constraints.
• Ensure benefits realisation frameworks are embedded and that benefits are tracked, reported, and realised.
• Intervene where initiatives are underperforming to restore alignment, quality, and delivery confidence.
• Act as a trusted advisor to the Global Head of Change and executive leadership.
• Chair or contribute to portfolio governance forums and investment decision bodies.
• Build strong partnerships across business, technology, finance, and risk functions.
• Influence senior stakeholders to adopt and comply with portfolio standards and ways of working.
• Build and lead a high-performing portfolio management capability.
• Develop portfolio, program, and delivery leaders in the consistent application of PPM standards.
• Champion a culture of quality, discipline, transparency, and continuous improvement across the change portfolio.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Minimum 10 years’ experience within financial services or insurance sectors.
• Proven experience leading enterprise-scale portfolios of capital-funded projects and initiatives.
• Demonstrated success in defining, embedding, and enforcing PPM minimum standards across complex portfolios.
• Strong experience establishing and running portfolio-level reporting and quality assurance frameworks.
• Hands-on experience operating a Lean Portfolio Management practice.
• Excellent understanding of portfolio governance, investment management, and benefits realisation.
• Strong executive communication, influencing, and decision-making skills.

Desirable

• Experience in large, global, or highly regulated organisations.
• Exposure to Agile-at-scale and hybrid delivery environments (e.g. SAFe, Lean, Agile, waterfall).
• Relevant certifications such as PfMP, MSP, SAFe LPM, PMP, or equivalent.

Leadership Attributes

• Strong focus on quality, discipline, and consistency.
• Strategic, commercially astute, and outcome-driven.
• Confident, credible senior leader.
• Pragmatic change agent with high attention to detail.
• Able to challenge constructively and hold delivery teams to account.

What do we offer in return?

A career that you define. Our business succeeds by allowing our people to make a mark in the areas they care about most: personal development, volunteering, and fundraising for charity, or creating new insurance products that address society’s greatest challenges. And we know that separate home and work lives don’t really exist. If you’re happy and healthy at home, you’re more likely to be happy and fulfilled at work – and vice versa. That’s why we do our best to support our people in every aspect of their lives.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Howden we value diversity - there is no one Howden ‘personality 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. We consider our people our chief competitive advantage and as such we treat colleagues, candidates, clients, and business partners with equality, fairness, and respect – regardless of age, disability, race, religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, or family circumstances.

Our sustainability promise

We’re on a life-long journey to become an ever-more sustainable group. It’s a commitment to taking care of our people and the world we live in, to doing good business, and to making a positive impact wherever we can. Our governance processes, company policies, and review systems are all geared towards our goal of making a positive impact in the world.

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.