Head of Financial Inclusion

• New role to support the shaping and delivery of key objectives
• Leadership position reporting to the Chief Consumer Affairs Officer

About Our Client

LINK is the UK's largest cash machine network. Effectively every cash machine in the UK is connected to LINK, and LINK is the only way banks and building societies can offer their customers access to cash across the whole of the UK. All the UK's main debit and ATM card issuers are LINK members.

Cash machine operators join LINK in order to offer cash to the 100 million plus LINK-enabled cards in circulation.

The LINK network is a fundamental part of the UK's payments infrastructure and cash machines are by far the most popular channel for cash withdrawal in the UK, used by millions of consumers every week. The total value of LINK cash withdrawals can exceed £10 billion per month and at its busiest, LINK processes over 1 million transactions an hour.

LINK supports access to cash and the number of cash machines in the UK has grown from 36,000 in 2001 to just under 70,000 today. The number of free-to-use ATMs is at an all-time high of over 54,000 and over 98% of all ATM cash withdrawals by UK cardholders in the UK are made free of charge.

The company is a not-for-profit entity owned by the members and with a public interest objective. Further information can be found at: www.link.co.uk.

Job Description

The Head of Financial Inclusion key responsibilities will include:

• Support the Chief Consumer Affairs Officer to assume a key role in defining and shaping the future of the LINK Financial Inclusion Programme, contributing thoughts and ideas in alignment with corporate objectives.
• Responsible for the execution of the Financial Inclusion strategy to maintain LINK's commitment to protecting the coverage of free access to cash across the UK through ensuring the highest standards of structure, governance, project discipline and control.
• Responsible for creating and maintaining robust programme governance, documenting policies and processes in detail and monitoring compliance.
• Liaise effectively with key stakeholders including regulators, LINK Members, consumer groups and political representatives in order to meet the Programme objectives.
• Responsible for delivering developments to the Financial Inclusion Programme in line with requirements from the LINK Board supported by the LINK Consumer Council.
• Work collaboratively and effectively with all colleagues, including line management responsibility for a small team of analysts.
• Promote and maintain the highest levels of professionalism and risk management in line with LINK's role as the operator of a systemically important payments system.
• Deputise for the Chief Consumer Affairs Officer.

The Successful Applicant

Essential skills:

• Strong organisation skills with a proven track record of managing large programmes of work.
• Experience in delivering change whilst engaging with a broad range of stakeholders.
• Highly effective interpersonal and communications skills. A proven ability to communicate complex ideas clearly orally and in writing, and a natural ability to tailor communications style to the audience.
• High attention to detail, specifically the ability to create and manage accurate programme reporting to key external and internal stakeholders.
• Ideally you will have a background within financial services or payments industry, although exposure to relevant regulated sectors will be considered.
• Previous exposure to working with stakeholders in government e.g. MPs, and Local Government will be beneficial.
• Team leadership experience with an adaptable and engaging approach
• Ability to deal with ambiguity and rapid change.

Location:

• The role is based from LINK's offices in Harrogate with the ability for some remote/home working

What's on Offer

£90,000 basic plus package

Where specific UK qualifications are required we will take into account overseas equivalents. All third party applications will be forwarded to Michael Page.

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