Operations Director

We are seeking a skilled Operations Director to lead our business unit. The successful candidate will act as the general operations lead for a self-contained business unit, formed following the acquisition of a local firm by Howden Insurance (Ireland) Limited.

The Operations Director will be key to the seamless integration into the wider framework and maintaining the ongoing trading function and growth, with a primary focus on driving operational excellence and improvement.

About the Role:

Organisation and hosting of weekly management team meeting – setting agenda, prioritisation of items, action tracking, project reviews, issue resolution etc to ensure constant progress.

Projects - managing local change / projects which impact on team operation. Represent the business unit on central strategic initiatives where local input or action is required.

Work with Compliance on process review, quality assurance and operationalising regulatory requirements into documentation and business workflow to ensure the business is operationally compliant at all times.

Group Scheme management – oversight of DC, PRSA, (Group & Retail) and Risk only schemes, including renewals, invoicing, admin, leavers / joiners and supporting member engagement.

Lead the local administration team ensuring service continuity and quality is maintained and workload equity and capacity are managed effectively. Provide backfill as required, deal with complex queries and tasks, manage local processes and input / execute on central processes.

Reporting – provide operational and trading reporting for the business unit to the centre and leadership as required.

Constantly reviewing and improving trading processes, operational resilience and Business Continuity planning in partnership with our business leads.

Ensuring business unit adherence to Compliance and Health & Safety policies as outlined in Staff Handbook and Procedures Manual.

Responsible for roll out of Companywide employee engagement initiatives in the local team.

Lead, manage and motivate direct reporting staff, through monthly 121 and performance review discussions, driving the performance strategy in line with Howden HR policy.

Identification of training and support needs for admin team. Development of team through continuous learning and effective empowerment of tasks.

Manage coverage and capacity of the team in line with business needs and through effective diarisation and approval of leave.

About You

Demonstrates strong market awareness and an ability to communicate with and influence senior level executives internally and externally with the intention of building long lasting work relationships.

Extremely well organised with excellent time management skills.

Ability to work on own initiative, meet deadlines and work under pressure in a busy environment.

Keen eye for detail and strong ability to manage complexity and multiple competing items at once.

Strategic mindset with strong business acumen and ability to implement strategic initiatives with proven track record of same.

5+ years relevant experience within the Life & Pensions industry, ideally in an operational type role in a Brokerage business.

Familiarity with Life & Pension broking platforms, provider systems, portals and products is essential.

A proven capability of leading a team and managing people is desireable.

A minimum Qualified Financial Adviser (QFA) accreditation is essential.

Third level business qualification ideally.

A recognised qualification in Process Improvement would be helpful but not required.

About Howden Ireland:

Howden Ireland is part of Howden, the global insurance intermediary group, and has over 500 employees across 28 local offices advising clients on their commercial insurance, personal insurance, health insurance, life and pensions and mortgage requirements. Our success is primarily down to the incredible people we employ.

For more information, please visit About Us | Howden Ireland (howdengroup.com)

What do we offer in return?

A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we're looking for individuals who share the same values as us:

Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new

We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges

We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond

Reasonable adjustments

We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.

If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it's the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role's criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.

*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.