Compensation & Benefits Specialist

The Compensation Manager will play a central role in the design, delivery and governance of reward strategies across the Group’s various entities, ensuring alignment with business objectives and market competitiveness. This role will support and lead core reward activities across multiple entities, including annual pay and bonus cycles, adviser and income‑based variable pay, benefits management, and payroll oversight. Working closely with People and Culture, Finance, Payroll, and senior business leaders, the role will provide expert reward advice underpinned by strong analysis, governance, and commercial judgement. This is a hands‑on role with real breadth, offering the opportunity to influence reward strategy while ensuring day to day execution is robust, compliant, and scalable. This role reports into the Chief People Officer.

Responsibilities

• Compensation & Reward Strategy: Support the development and execution of Group wide compensation and benefits strategies, ensuring alignment with business objectives, market practice, and regulatory requirements. Act as a subject matter expert on reward matters across all entities, providing trusted advice to senior leaders, People and Culture colleagues, and Finance. Contribute to the ongoing evolution of reward frameworks to support attraction, retention, performance, and engagement across a diverse workforce and operating model. Review and rationalise existing compensation and incentive arrangements, identifying opportunities to reduce unnecessary complexity, improve consistency, and simplify administration. Support the design and implementation of more scalable and sustainable reward structures that can be applied effectively across multiple entities while retaining appropriate flexibility where required.
• Annual Reward & Remuneration Cycles: Lead and coordinate the annual salary and bonus review processes across multiple entities, ensuring accurate data, strong governance, and timely delivery. Build and maintain reward models and budgets, partnering with Finance to support decision‑making and approvals. Support off‑cycle reviews, promotions, and retention cases with clear analysis and recommendations.
• Variable Pay & Adviser Remuneration: Own the governance and operation of all variable pay and bonus schemes, including adviser and income‑fee based remuneration structures. Ensure schemes are clearly documented, consistently applied, and aligned with business, conduct, and regulatory expectations. Review scheme effectiveness and support enhancements where required.
• Benchmarking: Lead compensation benchmarking activity using external market data and salary surveys to inform pay positioning and decision making. Manage job evaluation and role matching to support consistent grading and pay structures across entities. Deliver detailed pay analysis to support recruitment, promotion, and reward decisions.
• Benefits Management: Manage the review and renewal of benefits arrangements across the Group, working with brokers and providers as required. Support the implementation of new or revised benefits. Ensure benefits provision remains competitive, cost‑effective, and aligned to colleague needs.
• Data Reporting & Governance: Ensure the integrity, accuracy, and accessibility of compensation and benefits data across HR and payroll systems. Produce ad‑hoc reports for senior leaders, committees, and governance forums. Support regulatory, audit, and disclosure requirements by providing accurate remuneration data and analysis.
• M&A Support: Support People and Culture due diligence activity for mergers and acquisitions, working closely with the HR lead for M&A and other relevant stakeholders. Lead the review and analysis of compensation, bonus, incentive, and benefits structures within target organisations, identifying risks, costs, inconsistencies, and areas of complexity. Assess alignment of target reward arrangements with Group reward principles, market practice, and regulatory expectations. Support the development of reward related integration plans, including recommendations on harmonisation, transitional arrangements, and future‑state reward structures. Provide clear analysis and documentation to inform decision making during due diligence and post‑acquisition integration phases.
• Stakeholder Support: Provide guidance to People and Culture Business Partners and managers on compensation and benefits matters. Support effective communication of reward programmes, including total reward statements and leadership materials. Build strong working relationships across People and Culture, Finance, Payroll, and the wider business.

About You

• Previous/current Reward/Compensation experience at senior level within a Wealth Management or Financial Services sector.
• Extensive experience in compensation data analysis.
• Demonstrable experience managing annual pay and bonus cycles and variable pay arrangements.
• Experience working across multiple legal entities with differing remuneration models.
• Strong technical skills with Excel; comfort with data analysis, dashboards, and compensation analytics. PowerBi knowledge is a plus.
• Project management skills, with the ability to prioritise and manage multiple assignments in a fast‑paced environment.

Skills/Other relevant information

• A consultative mindset and client‑centric approach to problem solving with the ability to influence and drive change.
• Excellent analytical and strategic thinking skills; ability to interpret data and translate insights into actionable recommendations.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively and confidently with diverse, senior level stakeholders across all the different entities of the Group.
• Ability to work in a fast‑paced and dynamic environment, with a high level of adaptability.
• Ability to build trust and collaborate effectively with stakeholders at all levels, including P&C, Finance, and Executive Committee.