National Performance Director, Business Banking in London

Following Nationwide’s acquisition of Virgin Money, we’re building an ambitious, relationship-led Business Bank with the scale, capability and expertise to support businesses across the UK. As we build and grow our Business Banking proposition, we’re looking for a National Performance Director to play a pivotal role in creating the performance, capability and oversight framework that will underpin our success.

This is an opportunity to help shape a national banking business at a defining stage in its development, setting the standards, disciplines and capabilities that will enable our teams to deliver sustainable growth, strong customer outcomes and consistently high-quality lending.

Reporting to the Director of Business Relationships, with a close working relationship with the Director of Large Corporate Lending, you’ll lead the national approach to performance, workforce capability, technical competence and first-line lending oversight across Business Banking. You’ll translate our growth strategy into clear performance expectations and practical plans, creating a consistent national framework while ensuring regional, segment and portfolio priorities remain visible and appropriately supported.

Crucially, this isn’t simply a performance management role. You’ll bring together commercial performance, people capability, credit quality and risk insight, helping our leaders understand what is driving performance, where opportunities are emerging and where targeted intervention is needed.

Flexible base location with travel. Proximity to London / Glasgow preferable but not essential.

About you

We’re looking for an established leader with significant experience in Business, Commercial or Corporate Banking, ideally within a large-scale, relationship-led or geographically dispersed environment. You’ll bring a strong understanding of how commercial banking businesses perform, as well as the relationship between growth, customer outcomes, colleague capability, credit quality and risk.

You’re likely to have experience of:

• Building performance frameworks that turn strategy into measurable commercial, customer, risk and people outcomes.
• Leading performance across relationship management, lending or commercial banking teams.
• Recruiting, mobilising and developing teams through significant growth or transformation.
• Using data, MI and portfolio insight to identify opportunities, emerging risks and areas of underperformance.
• Building technical competence, accreditation, coaching or quality frameworks within a regulated environment.
• Working confidently across Credit, Risk and Controls while maintaining clear first-line accountability.
• Influencing senior stakeholders and creating clarity across complex, fast-moving organisations.

Most importantly, you’ll be comfortable operating in a build environment. You’ll be able to move between strategy and execution, challenge constructively, create structure where it doesn’t yet exist and bring people with you as we establish a new national model.

This is an opportunity to join at a genuinely exciting point in our Business Banking journey. We have the ambition, scale and opportunity to build something distinctive, combining Nationwide’s customer-led ethos with the commercial banking capability and expertise brought together through Virgin Money.

As National Performance Director, you’ll have the opportunity to shape how that ambition translates into performance across the business, helping us build the capability, disciplines and standards needed to grow sustainably and deliver brilliantly for our customers.

If you’re excited by the opportunity to help build and shape the next chapter of Business Banking at Nationwide, we’d love to hear from you.

Your rewards

We continually review and evaluate our offering to ensure we have a broad range of market competitive benefits available for our colleagues. When you put a lot in, it’s only fair to expect a lot out. So, when you help us do the right thing for our customers, we want to reward you.

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• 30 days holiday
• Access to private medical insurance
• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement
• Access to an annual performance-related bonus
• Training and development to help you progress your career
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death
• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year

Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society. We forge our own path at Nationwide. As a mutual, we’re owned by our members — those customers who bank, save or have a mortgage with us. We challenge the financial sector status quo. We don’t see customers as the engine of profit. We put their needs first. Always.

If you’re inspired by fairer finances, passionate about making a meaningful impact, and truly care about customers, you’re one of us. At Nationwide, you are challenged to grow and rewarded for doing so. Valued. Recognised. Inspired to be your best. We are purpose driven. Uncompromisingly customer. Unstoppably Nationwide.

What to do next

To apply, simply click the ‘Apply Now’ button. Please ensure you attach your CV and complete a few short application questions.

Responsibilities

What you’ll be doing: You’ll design and embed a national performance framework covering customer growth and retention, lending, deposits, fee income, portfolio quality, productivity, conduct and colleague capability.

Working across Business Relationships and relevant Large Corporate Lending activities, you will:

• Translate our Business Banking strategy into clear national and local performance plans, priorities and measures.
• Build performance MI, forecasting and portfolio insight that enables better, faster and more forward-looking decision-making.
• Lead workforce planning and help mobilise, recruit and deploy our growing relationship management and lending teams.
• Create a robust technical competence and accreditation framework, ensuring colleagues have the commercial, credit and regulatory capability they need to succeed.
• Establish a risk-based approach to coaching and first-line lending oversight, supporting consistently strong credit standards and customer outcomes.
• Identify emerging performance, capability, conduct and lending-quality risks and ensure proportionate, sustainable action is taken.
• Use data and root-cause analysis to distinguish individual capability issues from wider challenges in process, proposition, leadership or operating model.
• Build strong performance disciplines and leadership rhythms across a geographically dispersed business.
• Work in partnership with Credit, Risk, Controls, Product, Finance, People, Operations, Transformation and Digital as we continue to shape the Business Banking operating model.