Our leading Finance Sector Client is undergoing a time of significant growth and transformation as they integrate a recent corporate acquisition. To support these endeavours, they are seeking to hire an experienced Procurement Lead.
The Procurement Lead will be responsible for overseeing the procurement function, ensuring alignment with the organisation's strategic objectives and compliance with regulatory standards. This role involves managing procurement governance, driving effective supplier performance oversight, and leading policy development and implementation. Working with their direct reports, peers and stakeholders, the Procurement Lead will facilitate high-level procurement discussions, oversee supplier risk management, and ensure effective contract and audit review processes.
Wider responsibilities will include:
* Leading the governance of procurement activities, developing ethical practices that ensure accountability and transparency. Leading the team acting as the primary point of contact for procurement-related queries and guidance across the business, working with relationship and policy owners across the group
* Ensuring an effective control environment through developing and maintaining effective supplier oversight. Ensuring and assuring supplier performance against contractual obligations and managing risk in line with the company's risk tolerance and appetite. Oversee audit, regulatory, and compliance issues related to supplier management
* Develop, implement, and continually improve procurement policies, ensuring they meet operational needs and reflect current best practices in risk management and supplier oversight
* Lead the planning and execution of Procurement Oversight Committee, ensuring thorough preparation of agenda items, review of matters arising, and timely escalation of critical procurement issues to senior stakeholders
* Help design, develop, and implement a comprehensive procurement approach that aligns with organisational needs and objectives, ensuring appropriate review and alignment with senior stakeholders. This strategy should integrate effective use of tooling and both consume and generate data insights to enable informed decision-making across the group
* Drive a target of 10% cost savings on procurement spend annually through strategic sourcing initiatives, vendor negotiations, strategic tender activities and enforcement of penalty clauses
* Stay attuned to industry developments and thought leadership, ensuring the company remains adaptable and responsive to emerging trends and innovations
* Establish and baseline comprehensive views of supplier ecosystem performance against commercial obligations and company policy, achieving a completeness level exceeding 95%
* Sustain a minimum of 90% of suppliers meeting or exceeding performance KPIs by each quarter-end
* Address supplier underperformance within 30 days by implementing and monitoring corrective action plans
* Collaborate with relationship owners across the organisation to categorise the supplier base and achieve 100% compliance with the procurement policy within one year
* Coordinate with Relationship and Technology Managers to escalate issues with suppliers in cases of non-compliance, major incidents, service level failures, or other urgent priorities
* Oversee Special Measures activities or formal Service Improvement Plans to proactively resolve instances of underperformance, delinquency, or non-compliance with commercial obligations
* Manage exceptions to Group Policy, Group Processes, or industry best practices when contractual agreements or supplier performance constraints arise, utilising Risk Management processes to ensure acceptance mitigation, or strategic resolution in all cases, in collaboration with Service Excellence and Architecture teams.
* Target 100% compliance with procurement policies and regulatory requirements, verified through internal audits and regular dip-testing
* Achieve a zero-issue target in procurement audits annually, passing all audits with minimal or no compliance issues
The ideal candidate for the role of Procurement Lead will have:
* Thorough knowledge of Procurement and Supply Chain Management practices in a hands-on setting: a thorough understanding of how to apply industry standards
* Thought leadership: experience in developing and implementing procurement strategies, policies, and governance frameworks; understanding of regulatory and compliance requirements in procurement and how to policies in a business with multiple stakeholders
* Prior experience working in a procurement lead or supply chain manager capacity previously - preferably within a regulated, Financial Services or offshore insurance, wealth or pensions industry setting
* Demonstrated success in contract negotiations with suppliers, running of tender / RFO activities within complex, multi-brand environments; the ability to use procurement data to drive forward decisions and enable successful outcomes
* Experience working with outsourced technical ecosystems desirable; a thorough understanding of third party risk management
* Office 365 Collaboration and Procurement Industry management tooling experience essential
* Previous experience working within or an understanding of FinOps disciplines and practices desirable
* The ability to work collaboratively with stakeholders at multiple levels of seniority, across multiple different suppliers and geographies
* A proactive individual, self-motivated, and able to use own initiative with previous proven ability
* Excellent spoken and written communication skills, with the ability to express technical concepts in Business English to non-technical audiences.
* Previous line management experience would be beneficial
* The ability to work under pressure with a consistent, proven, disciplined and consistent analytic approach and maintaining focus and accuracy is a necessity for this role
* Demonstrating personal accountability and ownership of own workload and development