General Overview:
We are hiring a Head of Operational Risk Controls & Quality for our client a fast-growing insurance organization operating across multiple lines of business. This senior leadership role is responsible for strengthening first-line governance operational resilience quality assurance and regulatory compliance across Health Life Motor Marine Aviation and broader P&C portfolios.
The role plays a critical part in supporting business scale and multi-line expansion while ensuring strong operational discipline customer experience and regulatory alignment. The successful candidate will embed robust risk and control frameworks lead quality and complaints oversight and act as a key partner to senior leadership regulators and external stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities:
Operational Risk & Controls:
- Lead enterprise-wide Non-Financial Risk Assessments (NFRAs) across all lines of business.
- Monitor the design and effectiveness of operational and regulatory controls ensuring timely remediation of gaps.
- Oversee quarterly control testing cycles maintaining audit readiness and regulatory documentation.
- Ensure operational risk events are identified reported investigated escalated and closed within agreed SLAs.
- Own first-line governance for operational risk in collaboration with Risk Compliance and Internal Audit.
- Oversee the development testing and maintenance of Business Continuity Plans (BCP) .
Quality Assurance & Continuous Improvement:
- Lead the enterprise Quality Assurance (QA) framework across all operational teams.
- Ensure consistency in quality standards sampling methodologies and review practices.
- Drive root-cause analysis and corrective action plans arising from QA findings.
- Lead transformation automation and process optimization initiatives aligned with operational KPIs.
Financial Crime & Regulatory Oversight (First Line):
- Oversee centralized alert management covering KYC Sanctions PEPs Transaction Monitoring FATCA and CRS .
- Act as Operations SME for FATCA/CRS onboarding classification documentation and reporting readiness.
- Ensure PCI-DSS compliance across all payment touchpoints and successful annual certification.
- Coordinate first-line implementation of regulatory changes in partnership with Compliance Risk and Legal.
- Ensure operational adherence to AML/KYC CBUAE conduct rules health authority regulations and sector-specific mandates across all LOBs.
Complaints Management:
- Oversee the complaints management framework across customer broker and corporate segments.
- Monitor complaints performance turnaround times and regulatory compliance.
- Ensure complaints insights drive service improvements control enhancements and better customer outcomes.
- Own governance standards that elevate customer experience across all lines of business.
Leadership & Stakeholder Management:
- Recruit lead mentor and develop the Operational Risk Controls & Quality team.
- Act as business lead for selection and enhancement of department IT systems.
- Manage departmental budget and resource planning.
- Support product and sales cycles from tender stage through onboarding.
- Deputize senior operations leadership as required and contribute to enterprise-wide initiatives.
Key Requirements:
- Bachelors degree in business administration Risk Management Compliance or a related discipline.
- 812 years of experience in operational risk internal controls quality assurance or compliance within insurance or financial services.
- Strong experience across multiple insurance lines of business (Health Life P&C preferred).
- In-depth knowledge of UAE insurance regulations control frameworks and governance standards.
- Prior exposure to regulatory audits risk reviews and operational readiness assessments.
- Proven ability to build and embed effective first-line control environments.
- Strong leadership stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Excellent analytical ability with high attention to detail.
- Demonstrated success leading cross-functional initiatives in fast-paced scaling environments.
- High integrity accountability and a customer-centric mindset.
Key Skills Computer Science,Operational Risk Management,Risk Management,Six Sigma,Continuous Improvement,Lean,Process Improvement,Pricing,Customer Support,Alteryx,Kaizen,Project Management Lifecycle
Employment Type : Full Time
Experience: years
Vacancy: 1