Assurance Consultant

Assurance Consultant, Hybrid, London

15 month Fixed Term Contract

 

Summary

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced individual with a background in financial services to join our Assurance Team as an Assurance Consultant. In this role, you will use your knowledge of payments and risk to undertake complex assurance work, support a team of assurance auditors from a SME prospective and be involved in a variety of projects.

As an Assurance Consultant, you will co-ordinate and oversee assurance activities for the team, ensuring the completion of the team’s portfolio of work. This will involve coaching colleagues to deliver high quality audits in a timely manner.

We would welcome hearing from applicants who are Certified Information Systems Auditors.

 

Key Accountabilities

• Collaborate with auditors through all stages of Participant Self Certification assurance activities including attending review meetings with stakeholders of all levels through to Senior Directors, operational, technical and audit areas.
• Perform quality reviews on assurance documentation for Participant reviews to agreed departmental standards, ensuring thorough audit trails are maintained, all issues and recommendations are agreed with Participants/Suppliers before being reported, and provide constructive feedback and coaching to Assurance Auditors.
• Complete assurance activities for new on-boarding Participants and major change.
• Review assurance materials and develop new participant assurance work programmes and assurance statements, recommending new approaches to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the assurance policy and process in the interest of all stakeholders.
• Support the implementation of effective continuous improvement solutions.
• Provide subject matter expertise for relevant internal and external stakeholders such as audit, operations, risk, service lines, security, participant/supplier, regulatory engagement and project working groups.
• Work closely with the Risk and other functions within Operations to ensure that risk and control issues for Participants are being tracked, within an agreed action plan.
• Deputise where necessary for the Senior Assurance Manager and support the Head of Onboarding and Assurance including representation at senior committees, new Participant and decision maker meetings
• Interview, train and mentor new assurance auditors.
• Action requests for assurance information from other departments within Pay.UK or external stakeholders.
• Effectively monitor and mitigate risks at a process level.
• Plan and deliver the assurance work and processes within the team being able to prioritise as appropriate. Produce plans and reporting to a high standard as directed by the Senior Manager and Head of OBA.
• Ensure timely reporting of progress on all deliverables to key stakeholders.
• Responding in an agile manner to ad-hoc requests for information e.g. Head of, Exec and Regulatory bodies, Participants.

 

Industry Services – Design & Delivery

• Provide effective stakeholder communications and reporting using standard materials where appropriate. As the industry is highly regulated, mandates, governance and collaborative programmes of work are the norm.
• Provide management reporting of assurance activities and escalation, where necessary, to evidence the achievement of KPI / best practise standards.
• Develop and maintain excellent working relationships across Pay.UK departments, Participants, suppliers and other external stakeholders.

 

Skills, Experience & Qualifications

• Have considerable breadth of knowledge of business practice, risk identification and mitigation and risk and control frameworks. A comprehensive understanding of, IT systems and controls, gained from an operational business or internal audit environment.
• Demonstrate the ability to liaise with management of external organisations, ranging from one-man businesses to multinational corporations.
• Experience in identifying control weaknesses and explaining them so others understand what options there may be in mitigation of risk exposures.
• Strong attention to detail, with a sharp eye for accuracy.
• Good analytical skills, with sound problem-solving and decision making abilities.
• A minimum of 5 years’ experience Internal Audit, Risk and Assurance preferably in financial services.
• A strong knowledge of IT security and data protection.
• Expertise of a risk-based approach to internal control and reporting
• Experience of influencing others, up to and including Senior Management and Directors, through persuasion, understanding and argument.
• Experience of auditing external bodies advantageous.
• Relevant industry qualifications such as CIA or PIA, CISA (or equivalent) desirable.