Head of Operational Compliance

Who are we?

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.

People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

Based in our Dublin Ringsend office, Howden Ireland are delighted to have a vacancy as a Head of Operational Compliance that will be an integral part of our wider Operations team.

About the Role:

The Head of Operational Compliance will play a critical leadership role in ensuring Howden Ireland maintains a robust and effective first-line compliance, operational risk, business continuity and resilience framework. The role will be responsible for translating complex regulatory requirements, including DORA and Operational Resilience obligations, into practical business processes that strengthen governance, enhance customer outcomes and support sustainable business growth.

Working closely with senior stakeholders across the business, the successful candidate will lead the development and oversight of risk and control frameworks, third-party and outsourcing governance, business continuity planning, and digital operational resilience. This individual will provide meaningful management information and insight to support decision-making, drive a proactive risk culture, and ensure the organisation is well-positioned to respond to regulatory change while maintaining strong operational performance and resilience.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the first line delivery of compliance, conduct, operational risk, business continuity and digital resilience frameworks.

• Translate regulatory requirements, including DORA and Operational Resilience, into practical business processes.

• Ensure governance, control effectiveness and insight drive proactive risk management and customer outcomes.

• Maintain a structured control environment with defined accountability and escalation.

• Work with the 2nd line of defense to ensure all risk and control decisions are evidenced and aligned to regulatory expectations.

• Identify root causes from MI, incidents, complaints and audit outputs

• Lead first line embedment of DORA across the business.

• Ensure mapping of important business services and critical dependencies.

• Oversee ICT risk controls, incident management and recovery capability.

• Oversee resilience testing and drive remediation.

• Manage third-party ICT risk and critical supplier oversight.

• Own the Business Continuity framework and ensure it is embedded across all areas.

• Ensure plans support recovery within defined impact tolerances.

• Define recovery objectives and responsibilities across functions.

• Oversee testing of continuity plans and track remediation actions.

• Ensure alignment with DORA and operational resilience requirements.

• Maintain resilience frameworks linked to important business services.

• Embed resilience into governance and decision making.

• Coordinate testing and ensure outcomes drive control improvements.

• Act as the business owner for all assigned outsourced service providers, ensuring arrangements remain appropriate, effective and aligned to business needs.

• Monitor service provider performance against agreed SLAs/KPIs, with documented evidence of review and challenge.

• Ensure issues, incidents, or service failures are promptly identified, escalated and remediated.

• Maintain accurate and complete records for all outsourcing arrangements, including inputs to the central outsourcing register.

• Work with relevant stakeholders to ensure all outsourcing arrangements comply with applicable regulatory requirements (e.g. CBI outsourcing expectations, CPC, GDPR, DORA where relevant).

• Develop MI showing risk exposure and control effectiveness.

• Shift reporting to forward-looking indicators.

• Support decision making in the Risk and Compliance Forum.

• Work with the 2nd line of defense to translate regulatory developments into operational requirements.

• Embed changes through processes, training and controls.

• Act as interface with second line on regulatory delivery.

• Lead due diligence across suppliers and partners.

• Ensure risk-based third-party assessment and ongoing third-party management

• Oversee ICT third-party risk aligned to DORA.

About You:

• Strong understanding of operational risk, compliance, outsourcing resilience and continuity.

• Ability to lead governance and influence senior stakeholders.

• Strong judgement and analytical capability.

• Effective stakeholder management and communication.
  Experience in the broker or insurance industry.

• Experience embedding regulatory frameworks into operations.

• Experience with DORA, operational resilience, outsourcing and business continuity.

• Experience with MI, audit and assurance processes.

• Compliance qualification desirable

• Insurance qualifications desirable

About Howden Ireland:

Howden Ireland is part of Howden, the global insurance intermediary group, and has over 600 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.

Permanent