About Call Assist
Call Assist specialises in providing 24/7 vehicle assistance services, primarily following breakdowns and accidents. We support customers across the UK and Europe through our extensive networks of independent vehicle recovery operators.
We work with a wide range of organisations, delivering assistance services either behind their brands or under the Call Assist Rescue brand. We also operate our own direct-to-consumer brands, Start Rescue and GEM Motoring Assist, which provide vehicle assistance and complementary insurance products.
Our long-standing client relationships have been built on dependable service, operational expertise and a commitment to continuous improvement. With approximately 350 colleagues delivering an award-winning service, we are proud of our track record while remaining determined never to become complacent.
The opportunity
We are seeking an experienced and commercially minded governance, risk and compliance professional to lead these functions across the Call Assist business.
Reporting directly to the Managing Director and providing regular updates to the Senior Management Team and relevant governance committees, the successful candidate will have overall responsibility for regulatory compliance, risk management, business continuity and operational resilience.
The role holder will lead a small Compliance and Assurance Team and manage the company’s relationships with its outsourced compliance and data protection advisers.
This is a senior and influential role. The successful candidate will help shape how Call Assist manages risk, delivers good customer outcomes and implements major commercial, regulatory and operational change.
Key responsibilities
The Head of Governance, Risk and Compliance will be responsible for:
- Leading, developing and managing the Compliance and Assurance Team, setting clear priorities and ensuring the function has the skills and resources required to support the business effectively.
- Managing the company’s outsourced compliance and data protection advisers, including agreeing priorities, overseeing performance and ensuring advice is practical, timely and relevant to Call Assist’s activities.
- Maintaining the company’s compliance with applicable regulatory, legislative, contractual, insurance and internal policy requirements.
- Providing clear, pragmatic and commercially informed governance, risk and compliance advice to the Board, Managing Director, Senior Management Team and wider business.
- Owning and continually developing the company’s risk management framework.
- Coordinating the identification, assessment, monitoring and reporting of strategic, operational, regulatory, financial, customer and third-party risks.
- Maintaining the company’s risk register and ensuring mitigating actions are clearly allocated, monitored and appropriately challenged.
- Owning and developing the company’s business continuity and operational resilience frameworks.
- Ensuring appropriate business impact assessments, continuity plans, scenario exercises and recovery arrangements are in place and regularly reviewed.
- Ensuring the company understands its important services, key dependencies, vulnerabilities and potential points of failure.
- Maintaining a proportionate assurance framework with clear first-line ownership, effective second-line monitoring and challenge, and access to independent assurance where appropriate.
- Developing and maintaining a risk-based compliance monitoring and assurance programme.
- Undertaking or overseeing thematic reviews of customer outcomes, operational processes, complaints handling, claims handling and key business controls.
- Ensuring monitoring and assurance findings are clearly reported, with agreed actions appropriately allocated, tracked and independently verified before closure.
- Reviewing the effectiveness of operational quality assurance arrangements.
- Ensuring effective policies, controls and standard operating procedures are in place across the business.
- Supporting the delivery of good customer outcomes through effective governance, training, monitoring, root-cause analysis and remedial action.
- Maintaining and continually improving the company’s frameworks for carrying out due diligence on clients, business partners and suppliers.
- Coordinating the completion of client, prospective client and other third-party due diligence questionnaires, ensuring responses are accurate, consistent, appropriately evidenced and approved by the relevant business owners.
- Supporting major new contracts, tenders, product developments and business-change initiatives from an early stage.
- Chairing the Risk Management, Consumer Duty and Compliance Committees.
- Acting as the company’s principal point of contact for the Financial Conduct Authority and other relevant regulatory or supervisory bodies.
- Representing Call Assist in client discussions concerning regulatory compliance, governance, risk management, operational resilience and customer outcomes.
- Maintaining an effective horizon-scanning programme to identify emerging regulatory, legislative and industry developments.
- Undertaking timely gap analyses and coordinating implementation activity so that the business is prepared for regulatory change.
- Promoting effective practice throughout the organisation through research, training, guidance, policy development and the continual review of services, controls and operating standards.
- Providing clear and regular reporting to the Senior Management Team and relevant governance committees on compliance, risk, assurance, operational resilience and emerging issues.
About you
Applicants will ideally hold a relevant professional qualification and should be able to demonstrate substantial experience in a senior compliance, risk, governance or assurance role within a regulated business.
The successful candidate will have experience or strong knowledge in the following areas:
- FCA regulation, including a detailed understanding of the structure of the FCA Handbook and the ability to identify, interpret and apply relevant rules and guidance.
- Consumer Duty and the practical application of customer-outcome requirements.
- Enterprise and operational risk management.
- Insurance distribution and associated regulatory requirements.
- Risk-transfer and client-money arrangements.
- Data protection and information governance.
- Compliance monitoring, control testing and assurance frameworks.
- Business continuity and operational resilience.
- Third-party and supplier due diligence.
- Supporting commercial contracts, product development and organisational change.
- Managing outsourced professional advisers and ensuring their work provides value to the business.
You will also need to demonstrate:
- Experience of leading and developing a compliance, risk, governance or assurance team.
- Sound commercial judgement and an ability to balance regulatory requirements with practical business considerations.
- The confidence to constructively challenge decisions and influence colleagues at all levels of the organisation.
- Resilience and professional independence, including when recommendations meet resistance.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- The ability to explain complex regulatory and risk matters clearly and proportionately.
- A collaborative and solutions-focused approach.
- The ability to build trusted relationships with senior leaders, clients, regulators and other external stakeholders.
- The ability to coordinate detailed responses across multiple business functions, challenge incomplete or inconsistent information and communicate the company’s governance and control arrangements clearly to clients and prospective clients.
- The ability to prioritise activity using a risk-based approach and deploy limited internal and external resources effectively.
Working arrangements
The role is based at our head office in Colchester and is contracted on a 37.5-hour working week, Monday to Friday.
Flexible working arrangements may be considered, depending on the needs of the successful candidate and the business.
The role will require occasional travel to attend meetings, seminars and other business events, including visits to the company’s Sussex office.
Salary will reflect the successful candidate’s experience and qualifications.
Retention Statement
Call Assist has a continued commitment to protecting the collection and use of personal and sensitive data.
All job applications will be held on our records for a period of 6 months in the strictest of confidence and not shared with any other business or organisation.
If you wish for your personal and sensitive data to be removed from our systems earlier, please contact us.
Job Types: Full-time, Contract, Permanent
Benefits:
- Company pension
- Employee discount
- On-site parking
- Sick pay
- Work from home
Work Location: In person
