Senior Credit Union Transformation Manager

Permanent, Full time , London/Hybrid, with travel across England

Help turn an ambitious £30m transformation programme into lasting change

At Fair4All Finance, we're working to make sure everyone has access to financial products and services that meet their needs. At least 20 million people in the UK are living in vulnerable financial circumstances and are poorly served or excluded from mainstream financial services. We want to change that.

We're now looking for an experienced Senior Credit Union Transformation Manager to play a central role in one of our most significant programmes.

This is a rare opportunity to help deliver a £30m, multi-year Credit Union Transformation Fund and wider programme designed to strengthen the capacity, sustainability and reach of credit unions across England. The programme will support modernisation, collaboration and strategic mergers, helping credit unions scale what works for customers in vulnerable circumstances.

And importantly, this is an opportunity to join at the point where ambition needs to become delivery.

The role

Working closely with our Programme Director and through our programme management team, you'll provide the integration, oversight and delivery grip that enables a complex programme with multiple workstreams, partners and stakeholders to move forward as one.

You'll translate strategy into an integrated delivery plan, connect work across the programme, manage dependencies and identify emerging risks and blockages, while ensuring individual project and workstream leads retain ownership of their delivery.

You'll help create a clear and reliable picture of what's happening, what's coming next, what's getting in the way and where decisions are needed.

You'll also ensure the programme has strong governance and delivery rhythms, providing concise reporting and recommendations to support effective decision-making and helping colleagues navigate risks, resources, dependencies and competing priorities.

Relationships will be every bit as important as plans

You'll be a visible and credible point of contact for the credit union sector, building trusted relationships with credit unions, trade bodies, delivery partners and other stakeholders.

You'll help ensure engagement across the programme is joined up, purposeful and genuinely useful, joining up workstreams requests and messages for organisations and avoiding disconnected approaches.

You'll listen to different perspectives, bring people together and, crucially, help turn what we're hearing from the sector into practical decisions about delivery. The role therefore requires someone equally comfortable building relationships externally and creating structure internally.

You'll also play an important role in managing relationships with funded organisations and delivery partners, making sure expectations, milestones and reporting are clear and acting when delivery moves off track.

What we're looking for

Above all, we're looking for someone who has successfully operated at programme level in a complex transformation environment.

You'll bring

• Strong experience leading or overseeing complex transformation or programmes with multiple workstreams, partners and stakeholders. Experience in financial services, community finance, public-purpose programmes or another regulated environment would be particularly relevant.
• Excellent programme leadership and integration skills, including integrated planning, milestones, dependencies, governance, risks and issues, reporting and constructive challenge.
• Experience creating pace, clarity and accountability across workstreams while allowing project and workstream leads to retain responsibility for their own delivery.
• Strong stakeholder and relationship-management experience, with the credibility to work with senior leaders, operational teams, external partners and sector stakeholders.
• The judgement to know what you can resolve, where you need to challenge and when something needs escalating, particularly where funding, governance, risk or programme direction are involved.
• Good commercial judgement and experience working with budgets, contracts, procurement, funding or commissioned delivery.
• Clear and credible communication skills, including the ability to turn complex information into concise reporting, practical recommendations and clear action.

You'll be someone who is comfortable with complexity. You can create structure from ambiguity, keep multiple moving parts connected and maintain momentum when priorities compete.

Do I need to come from the credit union sector?

Not necessarily.

Knowledge of credit unions or the wider community finance sector would be valuable, but it isn't essential.

We're equally interested in people who can bring excellent transformation, programme integration and stakeholder leadership experience from financial services, community finance, a regulated environment or another relevant purpose-led setting and who can quickly build credibility with the sector.

Experience of funding programmes, public or quasi-public funding, technology or operating-model transformation, collaboration or mergers would also be an advantage.

Want to know more take a look at the full job description here: Senior-Credit-Union-Transformation-Manager-Job-Description.pdf

Why Fair4All Finance?

We're a not-for-profit organisation with a clear purpose: to boost financial inclusion and help create a financial services system that works better for everyone. Our core funding comes from the Dormant Assets Scheme.

For this particular role, that means the opportunity to help shape something substantial. The Credit Union Transformation programme is intended to help credit unions modernise, collaborate and achieve sustainable transformation, ultimately increasing what they can deliver for customers in vulnerable circumstances.

Our values are Fair, Inclusive, Bold, Compassionate and Collaborative, reflecting both what we're trying to achieve and how we want to achieve it.

We offer flexible and hybrid working, 27 days' holiday plus bank holidays with options to buy or sell leave, a competitive contributory pension, health and wellbeing support and enhanced family leave.

This is a highly mobile role. You'll primarily be based around London and work flexibly from home, but building relationships across England is fundamental to the position, so you'll need to be comfortable travelling for meetings and sector engagement.

If you're an experienced transformation or programme professional who knows how to bring structure to complexity, build trusted relationships and turn ambitious plans into coordinated delivery, we'd love to hear from you.

To apply, submit your application via Applied by 5pm on Monday 16th November.