Asset Servicing Team Leader

AJ Bell Management Limited

Manchester

On-site

GBP 30,000 - 40,000

Full time

9 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

26 days holiday

Pension with matched contributions

Discretionary bonus scheme

Share schemes

Health Cash Plan

Discounted private healthcare

Free onsite gym

Enhanced family leave

Travel and bike loan schemes

Employee Assistance Programme

Job summary

AJ Bell is seeking an Asset Servicing Team Leader to guide the Corporate Actions Processing team, ensuring accurate, timely and compliant handling of events. You will coach a high-performing group, develop capability and drive improvements through automation and robust controls.

You will own training, onboarding, and resource planning to meet daily cut-offs while maintaining excellent customer outcomes and risk management. Hybrid working model applies, with in-office collaboration crucial.

Qualifications

Experience in financial services asset servicing or custody operations.
Strong leadership in a high-risk, deadline-driven environment.
Knowledge of corporate action event types, market practice, settlements and taxation.
Working knowledge of UK and international market practice incl. CREST and custody chains.
Strong FCA regulatory understanding as applies to asset servicing (CASS, Consumer Duty, tax reporting).

Responsibilities

Lead and develop the Corporate Actions Processing team to meet deadlines and maintain accuracy.
Sign off on complex events and high-value elections.
Manage risk controls, compliance and regulatory reporting.
Plan resources to meet market cut-offs and deadlines.
Develop training and recruitment for the team.
Produce MI on volumes, performance and errors.

Skills

Leadership

Corporate actions

Regulatory knowledge

Risk management

Stakeholder communication

Excel

Data analysis

Attention to detail

Communication skills

Influencing

CISI qualification

Education

CISI Investment Operations Certificate

Tools

Power BI

CREST knowledge

Custody systems

Job description

We are now recruiting an Asset Servicing Team Leader to lead the Corporate Actions Processing team. The team is well established and continues to develop as a high performing function, delivering strong customer outcomes through robust control, increasing automation and a focus on developing its people. We are seeking a Team Leader to continue that progression and support the next phase of the department’s growth.

The Team Leader is responsible for leading, coaching and developing the team to deliver accurate, timely and regulatory compliant processing of all corporate action events. The role is to ensure that service levels are consistently achieved, operational risk is effectively managed, and a robust control environment is maintained and evidenced.

Your key responsibilities:

Take ownership of the accurate and timely processing of all mandatory, voluntary and mandatory-with-options events, ensuring entitlements are calculated correctly, elections are instructed within market deadline, and customers are notified and paid correctly.
Act as the final technical referral point for the team, providing oversight and sign off on complex events, high value elections, and events where market practice or terms are unclear.
Lead, coach and develop a high performing team in a regulated, high risk, deadline driven environment, clearly communicating company, departmental and operational goals and leading by example on standards and values.
Continuously assess, maintain and improve the capability, competence and technical proficiency of the team through one-to-ones, performance reviews, the skill matrix, KPIs and structured development plans.
Own and develop training for new and existing team members, and assist with recruitment and onboarding into the team.
Plan and allocate resource to meet daily custodian and international market cut-offs, using cross-training and succession planning to remove single points of failure.
Manage intraday queues and workload allocation, prioritising time critical events and moving capacity as deadlines demand.
Ensure timely handling of internal and external queries, including secure messages, telephone calls, emails, escalations and complaint investigations, with a focus on customer-centred resolution.
Maintain the first line of risk defence, ensuring risk events, near misses and process weaknesses are identified and logged promptly, root causes established, and corrective actions completed to deadline.
Maintain the first line of compliance defence, ensuring adherence to processes designed to meet FCA and internal standards, with specific focus on CASS, Consumer Duty, and tax reporting obligations on corporate action events.
Ensure the team's controls are performed as designed and evidenced appropriately, applying effective independent challenge when reviewing and authorising the team's work, and maintaining accurate and current procedure documentation.
Produce, interpret and present MI on volumes, complexity, SLA/OPI performance, errors and ageing items, using data to inform decisions and drive improvement rather than to restate activity.
Keep the Asset Servicing Manager fully informed of team performance, risk exposure, resourcing challenges and the team's readiness to respond to operational, regulatory or market driven change.
Build and maintain relationships across AJ Bell and with custodians, depositaries, registrars and agents, to support delivery for the department.
Act as part of the Asset Servicing leadership group, shaping and implementing short and long term continuous improvement, including opportunities to reduce manual workflow through automation and system enhancement.
Support system testing and process change, ensuring procedures and documentation remain aligned with regulatory and audit expectations.
Deputise for the Asset Servicing Manager as required.

Competence, knowledge and skills:

Demonstrable experience in financial services within an asset servicing, corporate actions or custody operations role, in a regulated, high risk, deadline driven environment – typically four or more years.
Proven leadership capability, with experience of developing high performing teams and individuals in a high risk operational environment, and of improving performance through coaching, feedback, KPIs, quality frameworks and structured development.
Detailed understanding of corporate action event types, market infrastructure, settlement processes and taxation, including entitlement calculation, election management, key event dates and the consequences of missed or inaccurate processing.
Working knowledge of UK and international market practice, including CREST, and the impact of custody chains
Strong understanding of FCA regulatory requirements as they apply to asset servicing, including CASS, Consumer Duty and tax reporting obligations.
Experience of operating and evidencing controls, with a proven ability to identify root causes, implement corrective action and embed improvement in processes, systems and controls.
Strong ability to manage operational risk, departmental processes and resources effectively.
Ability to work across multiple systems to perform complex corporate action processing; experience of non-Microsoft and employer bespoke systems desirable.
High level of attention to detail, with evidenced experience of identifying and correcting errors in a process or procedure.
Confident analysing and interpreting operational and MI data, with strong Excel skills; experience of Power BI or equivalent reporting tools desirable.
Sound judgement, with the ability to investigate discrepancies, decide when to act and when to elevate, and to organise and prioritise workloads calmly across time critical deadlines.
Excellent written and verbal communication, able to convey complex information clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.
Strong influencing skills, comfortable working with internal and external stakeholders at various levels, and able to work both independently and as part of the wider Asset Servicing leadership team.
Relevant professional qualification (for example CISI Investment Operations Certificate), or willingness to work towards one, is desirable.

For internal applications, the closing date for this role will be 18 August 2026.

About AJ Bell

At AJ Bell, we believe investing should feel good. Whether you're looking for an ISA, pension or dealing account, whether you want to invest with the help of a financial adviser or do it yourself, we have easy-to-use solutions to suit people from all walks of life.

We're one of the UK's fastest-growing investment platform businesses, trusted by everyone from professional financial advisers to first-time investors.

Today, over 762,000 customers trust us to manage more than £121.5billion of assets. By continually striving to make investing simpler and more accessible, we're helping more people take control of their financial futures.

We're proud to be recognised as one of the UK's Best 100 Companies to Work For for six consecutive years, and a Great Place to Work® in 2025 and 2026, a reflection of our supportive and collaborative culture.

What we offer