Quality Assurance Manager

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Contract: Permanent

Working hours: 35 hours per week is full time. Our service is open from 8am to 8pm on weekdays. You'll agree your working pattern with your manager.

Salary: circa £64,000

Reporting to: Head of Customer Services

Direct reports: Quality Lead and Quality Advisers

Location: London docklands

Our permanent hybrid policy sees us all working at least four days across a fortnight in the office.

About us

At the Financial Ombudsman Service, we make decisions on a range of complex and difficult issues. Every year we resolve thousands of disputes between consumers or small businesses and their financial service providers

The Purpose of your role

Reporting into Head Customer Services, you will be part of the Quality Leadership team, who are responsible for the delivery of the Quality Framework across the Financial Ombudsman Service.

You will lead the implementation and maintain the service’s quality framework to ensure the organisation provides all its customers with a high standard of service. The Quality Assurance Manager will be responsible for the delivery of the objectives for each of the elements of the quality framework, identifying and leading all ongoing quality assurance activities to deliver measurable improvements to the quality of our casework and end-to-end customer experience.

To be successful in the role you will have a strong understanding of business needs, risks and how they impact the strategic goals. You will ensure that significant quality issues are appropriately identified. Consulting, engaging and influencing key stakeholders, including the Quality Improvement Manager to support implementing key improvements covering people, process and technology.

You will constantly maintain and review our quality framework to ensure it continually meets the needs of the service and its customers, keeping clear records and updating stakeholders. You will be accountable for agreed success metrics of the quality framework as part of the role.

You will provide engaging leadership to pro-actively drive quality and customer service improvement. You will be ensuring your team meet their objectives. You’ll coach, mentor and guide your team to ensure they strive to be the best they can be to provide quality service excellence to the organisation.

Key responsibilities

• Leading and developing a team of quality advisers, ensuring they have the skills and abilities to work with a wide range of stakeholders, analyse data and deliver varied improvements across training, guidance and processes.

• Obtaining assurance that the design and delivery of the service’s quality framework meets our expectations, is effective and efficient, and provides the required level of assurance over casework and customer quality.

• Providing effective guidance and support to casework leaders on quality and customer service matters.

• Ensuring the design and operational activity of your team is continuously capable of providing an effective quality service to the organisation.

• Partnering with our stakeholders to define, govern and monitor the effectiveness of our quality framework.

• Alongside the Quality Improvement Manager, ensuring all necessary quality training for the quality team and general casework teams is completed and remains topical to provide quality assurance to the service.

• Working with the Quality Improvement Manager to ensure the Quality Strategy and Quality Policy are implemented and governed, and to ensure all Quality processes, systems, frameworks and methods are in place, deployed, governed and continuously improved in line with regulatory and organisation requirements.

To be considered for this role, you’ll need to show us that you’ve got the skills and capabilities. You’ll have to meet the following minimum criteria:

Minimum Criteria

• Ability to engage and communicate effectively with stakeholders at different levels, and influence outcomes where necessary
• Previous line management experience, and ability to influence outcomes through effective leadership of your team
• Relevant experience of quality management and improvement in an operational environment, and in enhancing customer experience
• Appropriate knowledge of a wide range of financial services products, product quality issues and service quality issues
• Possessing strong problem-solving skills, having an innovative and solution focussed approach to your work.

Desirable Criteria

• Previous experience with risk management
• Have a suitable breadth and depth of understanding of the Ombudsman and its services, its operations, customers, businesses, partnering arrangements and organisational infrastructure.

Why Financial Ombudsman Service?

We are a values led organisation. Our values define our culture, influence our decisions, and underpin our vision and strategy.  They set out how we play our PART through Purpose, Ambition, Respect and Trust. You can learn more about our values here: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/aims-values

We also offer an attractive, competitive salary and flexible benefits to suit our people. Here’s a list of some of the many benefits and perks you can get for working with us:

• 25 days holiday entitlement, with the option to buy extra or sell days
• Generous pension
• Various Family Friendly Policies, including enhanced maternity pay, carers and dependants leave
• Employer provided benefits such as Private medical insurance, virtual GP, Critical illness cover, Life assurance cover, to name a few
• Choice of voluntary benefits including Technology scheme, Cycle to work scheme, Will-writing service amongst others
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Extensive opportunities for personal and career development
• Fully equipped on-site gym open 24 / 7 (London office only)
• Extensive Well-being resources including on-site therapists (London office only)
• Beautiful and bright London office looking over the Thames and near to mainline stations
• Our Coventry office is 2 minutes’ walk from the main station
• Our employee led networks (a couple of examples being our Women's Network, Carers network, and Neurodiversity Support Network) do fantastic work in educating and raising awareness across a range of experiences and support us in being an inclusive employer and a great place to work. You can get involved, too! 

How do I apply?

• Please apply with your CV and a cover letter explaining why you are a good fit for this role.

Applications need to be submitted by Friday 8th November 2024.

Interview process:

1st stage - Initial screening call with talent team via Teams

2nd stage - F2F Interview with Hiring Manager

Due to high application numbers this advert may end earlier than the date specified, so please don't delay and apply now!

A full job profile is available on request and will be provided to candidates shortlisted to the first stage of the assessment process.

We’re proud to be an inclusive employer

We view diversity as fundamental to our success and welcome applications from underrepresented groups across all communities.

We’re committed to being a great place to work– attracting and developing people from the widest possible range of backgrounds. We want everyone to perform at their best and feel able to be themselves. We understand that if we’re diverse and inclusive, we’ll better understand different perspectives, which is fundamental to our job resolving financial complaints.   

We welcome applications from Black and other ethnic minority candidates, and female candidates, for all positions and particularly so for senior leader positions as they are under-represented within the Financial Ombudsman Service at this level.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. This means that we will put disabled candidates entering under the scheme through to the next stage of the recruitment process should they meet the minimum criteria for a role. A minimum criterion needs to be measurable from reviewing a candidate’s CV/supporting statement. Exceptions may apply if due to the volume of applications we are not able to interview all eligible candidates who qualify under the scheme. If you would like to speak to a member of our team about any reasonable adjustments you need, please email recruitment@financial-ombudsman.org.uk and let us know your preferred method of contact.

Find out more

Check out below channels to find out more about everyday life at the Financial Ombudsman Service – and don’t forget to follow us while you’re there!

• LinkedIn: Financial Ombudsman Service
• Our careers page: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/join-us