Head of Operational Compliance & Resilience (Hybrid)

Howden Insurance (Ireland) Limited; Dublin; On-site; EUR 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

reasonable adjustments

Job summary

Howden Ireland is seeking a Head of Operational Compliance based in Dublin to lead first-line compliance, risk, business continuity and digital resilience across the operations team. You will translate complex regulatory requirements, including DORA, into practical processes that strengthen governance and support sustainable growth.

Working with senior stakeholders, you will drive risk-based governance, MI reporting and proactive risk culture, ensuring alignment with regulatory expectations and

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of operational risk, compliance, outsourcing resilience and continuity.
• Ability to lead governance and influence senior stakeholders.
• Strong judgement and analytical capability.
• Effective stakeholder management and communication.
• Experience in the broker or insurance industry.
• Experience embedding regulatory frameworks into operations.
• Experience with DORA, operational resilience, outsourcing and business continuity.
• Experience with MI, audit and assurance processes.
• Compliance qualification desirable
• Insurance qualifications desirable

Responsibilities

• Lead the first line delivery of compliance, conduct, operational risk, business continuity and digital resilience frameworks.
• Translate regulatory requirements, including DORA and Operational Resilience, into practical business processes.
• Ensure governance, control effectiveness and insight drive proactive risk management and customer outcomes.
• Maintain a structured control environment with defined accountability and escalation.
• Work with the 2nd line of defense to ensure all risk and control decisions are evidenced and aligned to regulatory expectations.
• Identify root causes from MI, incidents, complaints and audit outputs
• Lead first line embedment of DORA across the business.
• Ensure mapping of important business services and critical dependencies.
• Oversee ICT risk controls, incident management and recovery capability.
• Oversee resilience testing and drive remediation.
• Manage third‑party ICT risk and critical supplier oversight.
• Own the Business Continuity framework and ensure it is embedded across all areas.
• Ensure plans support recovery within defined impact tolerances.
• Define recovery objectives and responsibilities across functions.
• Oversee testing of continuity plans and track remediation actions.
• Ensure alignment with DORA and operational resilience requirements.
• Maintain resilience frameworks linked to important business services.
• Embed resilience into governance and decision making.
• Coordinate testing and ensure outcomes drive control improvements.
• Act as the business owner for all assigned outsourced service providers, ensuring arrangements remain appropriate, effective and aligned to business needs.
• Monitor service provider performance against agreed SLAs/KPIs, with documented evidence of review and challenge.
• Ensure issues, incidents, or service failures are promptly identified, escalated and remediated.
• Maintain accurate and complete records for all outsourcing arrangements, including inputs to the central outsourcing register.
• Work with relevant stakeholders to ensure all outsourcing arrangements comply with applicable regulatory requirements (e.g. CBI outsourcing expectations, CPC, GDPR, DORA where relevant).
• Develop MI showing risk exposure and control effectiveness.
• Shift reporting to forward‑looking indicators.
• Support decision making in the Risk and Compliance Forum.
• Work with the 2nd line of defense to translate regulatory developments into operational requirements.
• Embed changes through processes, training and controls.
• Act as interface with second line on regulatory delivery.
• Lead due diligence across suppliers and partners.
• Ensure risk-based third-party assessment and ongoing third-party management
• Oversee ICT third-party risk aligned to DORA.

Skills

Operational risk

Regulatory leadership

Stakeholder management

Analytical capability

DORA experience

Outsourcing governance

Business continuity

MI & audit experience

Compliance knowledge

Insurance industry experience

Job description

Howden Ireland is seeking a Head of Operational Compliance based in Dublin to lead first-line compliance, risk, business continuity and digital resilience across the operations team. You will translate complex regulatory requirements, including DORA, into practical processes that strengthen governance and support sustainable growth.

Working with senior stakeholders, you will drive risk-based governance, MI reporting and proactive risk culture, ensuring alignment with regulatory expectations and