Sourcing An Operational Risk Director for An Investment Bank

Opportunity

A combination of changes in the leadership of the operational risk team of this international investment bank and increased demands from the regulator to upgrade their operational risk framework with a specific focus on technology and operational resilience issues meant that a senior operational risk practitioner was urgently needed to augment and support the bank’s existing operational risk leadership. The Operational Risk Director person specification was explicit and complex, requiring a combination of capital markets experience, along with expertise in operational, enterprise and technology risk including business resilience.

Approach

Working across our risk management and cyber security/technology risk teams, we were able to combine our multi-disciplinary networks to be able to identify potential candidates with the right level of risk and technology/resilience skills and experience who also had the right level of seniority to be able to quickly establish credibility with various stakeholder groups across the business and provide the regulator with the reassurance it needed that the risk priorities were understood and being addressed. Approaches were made to these candidates, being mindful of the degree of confidentiality involved at this level, to identify a shortlist of candidates who had the availability and interest in the role to combine with the requisite professional capabilities.

Outcome

The client was delighted with the shortlist of candidates that were presented in a short time frame who all had the desired capabilities and who all received excellent interview feedback. The shortlist included candidates with slightly varied levels of experience, as a consequence the client was able to make 3 appointments; the lead operational risk director plus 2 additional interims as the available candidates offered an opportunity to support the lead operational risk director to ensure that key projects could be advanced, and the regulator provided with the reassurance it sought.  The process from us receiving the initial instruction to the engagement of the 3 interims was three weeks.