Lead Crisis & Business Continuity Manager

London/Hybrid
5 month contract
Day rate £800 via Umbrella Company

Our commitment is to provide equal opportunity regardless of, for example, your gender, age, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or beliefs. We also engage with employers to develop programmes and pathways that embrace diverse talent and promote more inclusive employment worldwide through partnerships and other initiatives. We recognise and celebrate the value of difference and how it makes us faster, smarter and more innovative than our competition.

My client is one of the largest financial institutions headquartered in Japan, with an established presence across all consumer and corporate banking businesses. Through its subsidiaries and affiliates, they offer a diverse range of financial services, including commercial banking, leasing, securities, credit card, consumer finance and other services.

They are looking for a Lead Crisis & Business Continuity Manager to join the team on an initial 5 months contract, working Monday to Friday, standard office hours with the occasional out of hours requirement in line with business needs. The position is being offered on a hybrid working basis being office based 3 days a week, 2 days working from home.

Purpose of Job

You will be responsible for leading the organization's enterprise-wide Crisis & Business Continuity management response capabilities. This role ensures the organization can effectively anticipate, prepare for, respond to, manage, and recover from significant operational, technology, cyber, reputational, regulatory, Geo-political and business disruption events.

The role provides strategic leadership for continuity and disaster recovery governance, crisis readiness, executive response coordination, stakeholder communication, and continuous improvement of organizational resilience. The role acts as the principal advisor to senior leadership during high-impact crisis situations, enabling timely decision-making and minimizing business, customer, financial, and reputational impacts.

The role ensures the organization can effectively prepare for, respond to, recover from, and adapt to operational disruptions while protecting critical services, customers, employees, reputation, and financial performance.

Acting as the senior authority on business continuity, providing strategic advice to executive leadership and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best practices. This role will be the primary liaison with any regulator on business continuity issues.

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership and executive oversight for the development, implementation and continuous enhancement of the major incident & crisis framework across EMEA, ensuring alignment with regulatory expectations, corporate governance, and operational resilience objectives.
• Lead multidisciplinary teams during an incident/crisis across multiple geographic locations, driving a high-performance culture and ensure consistent delivery of resilience, incident response, and continuity capabilities across the enterprise.
• Chair and direct Silver, and Gold Command structures during crises, including cyber-attacks, technology failures, operational disruptions, geopolitical events, reputational threats, and other enterprise-level risk events.
• Be the escalation path for all major incidents (where bcm invoked), directing and coordinating the process including resolver teams both internally and externally ensuring incident is resolved.
• Provide comprehensive 24/7 on-call support for Incident and Crisis Management matters.
• Provide out of hours support for Disaster Recovery tests and major changes.
• Drive integration between Major Incident Management, Crisis Management, Business Continuity, Operational Resilience, and Disaster Recovery programs.
• Support prevention of incidents from materialising into Major incidents/Crisis through remediating root cause, proactive management
• Ensure crisis communication plans and escalation procedures remain effective and current.
• Own and oversee regulatory incident classification, materiality assessments, and reporting obligations under DORA, FCA, PRA, ECB, and other applicable regulatory frameworks, ensuring timely and accurate regulatory submissions.
• Assess Incident complexity, invoke & manage the Crisis Management process if triggers are breached.
• Ensure effective command, control, coordination, and communication throughout incident/crisis lifecycles.
• Ensure diagnosis, action plans and key initiatives are shared with the relevant parties across all resilience pillars
• Organise post-incident reviews to share / brainstorm on actions and suggestions to avoid similar incidents/crises in the future or shorten resolution time. This involves writing and publishing organisational Incident Reports (PIR) which details organisational issues experienced during resolution and suggest improvements to speed up the team reactivity.
• Direct and oversee the design, execution, and facilitation of BCM & Crisis simulation exercises, executive leadership workshops and BCM & Crisis testing programmes across EMEA, strengthening organisational preparedness and response maturity.
• Deliver executive-level resilience briefings and awareness initiatives to Board members, senior leadership teams, and key stakeholders, embedding a culture of resilience throughout the organisation.
• Accountable for Regulatory Compliance, Internal Control Frameworks, Risk Assessment, Policy Development, Board Reporting and Corporate Governance.
• Establish program metrics, reporting, and performance indicators to measure resilience capability.
• Conduct regular reviews and maturity assessments of Central Incident, Crisis & BCM capabilities.
• Present Crisis & BCM program status, risks, and recommendations to executive leadership and governance committees.
• Build strong relationships across EMEA, business functions and senior leadership.
• Represent the organisation EMEA on the UK Finance Business & Operational Continuity Committee (BOCC) acting as the organisations 24/7 contact during a UK systemic financial incident.
• Establish functional objectives, budgets, and performance measures.
• Provide strategic leadership and executive oversight for the development, implementation and continuous enhancement of the Business Continuity framework across EMEA, ensuring alignment with regulatory expectations, corporate governance, and operational resilience objectives.
• Direct the completion of Business Impact Analyses (BIA) & Business Continuity Plans (BCP), resilience assessments and dependency mapping to identify critical business services, recovery priorities, and operational vulnerabilities.
• Ensure all business units maintain current and effective Business Continuity Plans (BCPs).
• Partner with Technology teams to align business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
• Acts as advisor to business units and senior stakeholders, ensuring continuity planning, resilience strategies, Business Impact Analyses (BIAs), and recovery capabilities are aligned with organizational objectives, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices.