Head of Operations Integration

Lead and be accountable for the end-to-end integration of RBL Operations into Group Operations, covering the Operations target operating model, process and service integration, centralisation, operational migration, capacity and workforce alignment, controls, productivity, service continuity and stabilisation.

The role will lead the Operations integration agenda working directly with RBL Operations counterparts and relevant ENBD Operations teams, and will represent Group Operations within the enterprise integration programme coordinated by Group Strategy.

The role is accountable for converting agreed integration objectives into executable Operations plans and delivering the required operational outcomes while maintaining safe and stable day-to-day operations throughout the integration.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Translate approved integration scope into detailed operations migration plans, process inventories and readiness checklists.
• Define processing readiness criteria, operating cutover steps, hand-off points and stabilization controls.
• Drive daily execution discipline across operations teams, including queue tracking, backlog closure and action follow-up.
• Validate process-level migration plans to ensure ownership, controls, maker-checker requirements and service impacts are clearly defined.
• Provide operational progress, exception reporting and escalation recommendations to the Head of Integration.
• Lead migration of agreed transaction processing, account maintenance, card operations, loan operations and service fulfilment activities into the operations centre.
• Monitor daily volumes, ageing, backlogs, exceptions and productivity across migrated processes.
• Ensure operating teams are trained on procedures, hand-offs, escalation paths and quality checks.
• Drive issue resolution for processing breaks, pending items, rejected cases and operational bottlenecks.
• Maintain customer-impact awareness through service-level and complaint-linked operational trends.
• Standardize migrated operating procedures, checklists, hand-offs and service routines across the operations centre.
• Embed first-line controls, maker-checker requirements, quality sampling and exception approval steps.
• Review control breaks, processing errors, repeat queries and rework drivers to strengthen operational discipline.
• Drive resource optimization, workload balancing and elimination of duplicate processing steps.
• Resolve operational issues impacting turnaround time, accuracy, service fulfilment or internal hand-offs.
• Lead daily and weekly operations review forums focused on volumes, SLAs, backlogs, exceptions and control breaks.
• Manage relationships with operations centre heads, processing leads and service fulfilment teams.
• Drive resolution of operational conflicts, capacity constraints, aged queues and recurring processing issues.
• Provide oversight of operations migration progress, process dependencies and stabilization actions.
• Support the Head of Integration with concise operations performance updates and escalation notes.
• Oversee stabilization plans for migrated operations processes after cutover.
• Ensure operating teams achieve agreed service levels, productivity benchmarks and quality expectations.
• Drive prioritization of improvement actions that reduce processing delays, rework and operational exceptions.
• Simplify operating procedures, hand-offs, checklists and queue ownership where operational inefficiencies are identified.
• Remove operational blockers impacting delivery and escalate unresolved service risks where required.
• Own delivery of operational efficiency, capacity utilization and productivity improvement targets arising from the migration.
• Challenge and validate staffing, volume and productivity assumptions for migrated operations processes.
• Monitor efficiency benefits and intervene where productivity, backlog or service-level targets are at risk.
• Drive accountability across operations teams for delivery of committed performance outcomes.
• Provide regular updates to the Head of Integration on operations efficiency and stabilization performance.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations Management, Finance or related discipline 
• MBA (preferred)
• PMP / PRINCE2
• Operations excellence / Lean process improvement certification preferred
• Lean Six Sigma (preferred)
• 18+ years of experience with 10+ years in Banking or Financial Services back-office operations and 5+ years leading operations migration, centralization or service centre transformation programs
• Merger and acquisition integration (Must)
• Prior Retail Banking operations experience across account maintenance, cards operations, loans operations, liabilities operations, service fulfilment, reconciliations, document processing, operational controls and exception management.
• Consultancy Background (Preferred)
• Back-Office Operations, Operations Centre Management, Cards and Liabilities Operations, Loan Operations, Account Maintenance, Service Fulfilment, Reconciliations, Exception Management, Process Standardization, Operational Controls, Quality Assurance, Capacity Planning, Productivity Management, Data Analysis, Excel and MS Office

• Must possess strong operational problem-solving, analytical and numerical skills; service-level management; process mapping; control design; workload planning; productivity tracking; stakeholder coordination; and hands-on operations delivery governance.

   

#LI-SA1