IT Change Manager

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 24,000 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.

Role Overview

The Change Manager is responsible for governing, controlling, and continuously improving the end‐to‐end IT Change Management process within a regulated, global insurance environment. The role ensures that all technology changes across Infrastructure & Operations are assessed, authorised, prioritised, and implemented in a controlled manner to minimise risk, disruption, and client impact. Operating within a global, outsourced delivery model, the Change Manager provides oversight of both internal teams and third‐party vendors, ensuring adherence to change standards, regulatory expectations, and best practice frameworks. The role plays a critical part in supporting operational resilience, service stability, and regulatory compliance while enabling the business to deploy change safely and effectively.

Key Responsibilities:

• Change Management Governance
• Own and operate the IT Change Management framework, policies, and procedures.
• Ensure consistent application of standard, normal and emergency change processes.
• Chair the Change Advisory Boards (CAB) and Emergency CABs (ECAB) as required.
• Ensure changes are properly assessed for risk, impact, dependencies, and regulatory implications before approval.
• Change Control & Risk Management
• Ensure changes do not introduce unacceptable risk to production services, operational resilience, or regulatory compliance.
• Challenge poor‐quality change submissions and drive improvements in impact assessment, testing, and rollback planning.
• Monitor emergency and failed changes, ensuring root cause analysis and corrective actions are completed.
• Maintain strong controls over high‐risk, business‐critical, and customer‐impacting changes.
• Third‐Party & Internal Change Oversight
• Govern change activity delivered by outsourced or Group infrastructure and application service providers.
• Ensure technical resources comply with internal change processes, lead times, and documentation standards.
• Monitor vendor change quality, success rates, and compliance with contractual obligations.
• Work with regional entity change resources (managers, analysts, and CAB members) to ensure a consistent approach to core change processes and values and resolve issues or conflicts.
• Operational Resilience & Compliance
• Ensure Change Management supports operational resilience principles and aligns with regulatory expectations (e.g. outsourcing, service continuity, auditability).
• Provide evidence, reporting, and support for internal audits, regulatory reviews, and assurance activities.
• Identify and mitigate change‐related risks and control gaps.
• Configuration & Release Alignment
• Work closely with Configuration Management to ensure changes are accurately reflected in configuration records and CMDB.
• Coordinate with Release Management to ensure changes are deployed in structured, controlled release cycles where appropriate.
• Maintain visibility of the forward change schedule and manage change conflicts.
• Reporting & Continuous Improvement
• Produce regular change performance reporting, including success rates, failed changes, emergency changes, and trends.
• Analyse change data to drive continual improvement in process maturity, quality, and efficiency.
• Implement improvements to reduce service disruption and improve predictability of change.
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Act as the central point of coordination for change across Infrastructure & Operations.
• Build strong relationships with Service Managers, Architecture, Security, Risk, Compliance, and delivery teams.
• Provide clear communication on change status, governance decisions, and emerging risks.
• Projects
• Howden is evolving quickly and is in the midst of several large projects, the Change Manager will need to support projects as Sponsor, Owner, SME or advisor as required.

Qualifications and Experience:

Essential

• Proven experience in an IT Change Management role within a complex, regulated organisation.
• Strong understanding of ITIL Change Enablement / Change Management processes.
• Experience operating formal CAB and ECAB governance forums.
• Demonstrable experience managing change in outsourced and multi‐vendor environments.
• Strong risk assessment, decision‐making, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience supporting audits and regulatory reviews related to technology change.

Desirable

• Experience within insurance or broader financial services.
• ITIL v4 certification (or equivalent).
• Familiarity with operational resilience, outsourcing regulations, and technology risk frameworks.
• Experience working across global, distributed teams and multiple time zones.
• Experience working with ServiceNow ITSM platform.

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.