Manager, Operational Resilience & Third Party Assurance in City of Westminster

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we're helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the Chief Operating Office in Vocalink Limited, a Mastercard business, which provides Critical National Infrastructure to the UK.

• Vocalink is the UK company that enables the payments of 90% of salaries, 70% of utility bills, most ATM transactions and every cheque cleared in the UK.
• We provide services to over 60 million citizens, and the UK private, public and third sectors.
• In 2024, we processed 14 billion transactions, with a value of more than £10 trillion.
• Vocalink products include Bacs Direct Credits, Bacs Direct Debits, Faster Payments, the LINK ATM network for cash withdrawals, and the Image Clearing Service (ICS) that supports cheque clearing.

Operational Resilience

Vocalink complies with the Bank of England's requirements on Operational Resilience. The Bank defines operational resilience as 'the ability of Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) and the sector as a whole to prevent, respond to, recover and learn from operational disruptions' with a particular focus for Vocalink on protecting financial stability, preventing threats to the transfer of payments, and enabling the safety and efficiency of the Recognised Payment Service Operators.

In Vocalink, the Chief Operating Office has overall accountability for the Operational Resilience Framework including policies and procedures, working closely with the Important Business Services owners in the Product and Commercial Services teams, as well as 'Pillar' owners across Technology, Security, Data, Facilities, People and Third Parties. The team also work closely with key stakeholders across the financial services industry and particularly the Recognised Payment Service Operators.

Overview of Role

The Manager, Operational Resilience & TPRM Assurance will play a critical role in ensuring Vocalink has adequate assurance of its response and recovery capability across assets supporting Important Business Services, response and recovery capabilities both within Vocalink and across its Critical Third Parties. This role will report to the Director Operational Resilience Exercising, who is responsible for the Operational Resilience testing and assurance regime across Vocalink.

In this role, you will be accountable for:

• Develop and deliver stressed and non-stressed exit testing for all critical third parties, ensuring Vocalink is testing the impact of losing key supplier relationships in line with internal policy requirements.
• Provide Operational Resilience SME input to the Third Party Risk Management Team to ensure TPRM policy requirements align with expectations within the Operational Resilience Code of Practice for SSPs and RPSOs.
• Supporting the preparation, delivery and execution of extreme but plausible scenario tests, including internal tests, joint tests with Recognised Payment System Operators and industry tests.
• Supporting the management of Operational Resilience Vulnerabilities, Risks and Issues identified through testing and assurance activity to ensure any gaps are owned by the appropriate accountable executive and closed in a timely manner.
• Support the drafting of high quality reports summarising Vocalink's response and recovery capability to enable Executive and Board-level understanding of capability.

Required Skills and Experience

• Education: at least an undergraduate degree.
• Experience:

• detailed understanding of Outsourcing/TPRM in financial services
• detailed understanding of Operational Resilience in financial services.
• Preferably experience of working in a TPRM environment within financial services.

Skills and attributes:

• An ability to deal with ambiguity, complexity and competing priorities and to quickly assess, simplify and articulate challenges, solutions and recommendations.
• An ability to get things done, and to see the bigger picture.
• An ability to work under pressure to meet deadlines and react quickly to changing priorities.
• A proactive self-starter who has a passion for learning, doing and making a difference.
• A strong team player and collaborator with a team-first ethos and low ego.
• Excellent and engaging oral, written and presentational skills.

Security and Information Security

• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.