Head of Business Continuity / Enterprise Business Management Director - Global Banking Group - Up to £150,000 + Bonus + Full Benefits - City / London

Our client is a successful global banking group with offices based in the City/London. With a sustained 15-year track record of steady growth without the need to made redundancies, this global bank has a strong reputation in the market for developing the careers of its employees, offering a stable business with an excellent and positive working culture. Our client is now recruiting for a Head of Business Continuity / Enterprise Business Management Director, who will be responsible for leading the organization's enterprise-wide Crisis & Business Continuity management response capabilities. This role ensures the organization can effectively anticipate, prepare for, respond to, manage, and recover from significant operational, technology, cyber, reputational, regulatory, geo-political and business disruption events.

The role provides strategic leadership for continuity and disaster recovery governance, crisis readiness, executive response coordination, stakeholder communication, and continuous improvement of organizational resilience. The role acts as the principal advisor to senior leadership during high-impact crisis situations, enabling timely decision-making and minimizing business, customer, financial, and reputational impacts. This role will be the primary liaison with any regulator on business continuity issues.

Role Description

1. Lead the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of the EMEA Major Incident, Crisis Management, and Business Continuity frameworks, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements, governance standards, and operational resilience objectives.
2. Provide executive leadership during major incidents and crises, chairing Silver and Gold Command structures across events including cyber incidents, technology failures, operational disruptions, geopolitical events, and reputational threats.
3. Act as the escalation point for major incidents where Business Continuity is invoked, coordinating internal and external resolver teams and ensuring effective resolution.
4. Provide 24/7 on-call support for Incident and Crisis Management activities, including out-of-hours Disaster Recovery testing and major technology changes.
5. Drive integration across Incident Management, Crisis Management, Business Continuity, Operational Resilience, and Disaster Recovery programmes.
6. Manage crisis escalation, communications, regulatory incident classification, materiality assessments, and reporting obligations under applicable frameworks including DORA, FCA, PRA, and ECB requirements.
7. Ensure effective command, control, coordination, communication, and stakeholder engagement throughout incident and crisis lifecycles.
8. Lead post-incident reviews, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement initiatives, producing reports and recommendations to strengthen organisational resilience and reduce recurrence.
9. Design, deliver, and facilitate crisis simulations, Business Continuity Management testing programmes, and executive workshops to enhance preparedness and response capability.
10. Provide resilience reporting, briefings, and recommendations to Executive Committees, Risk Committees, Board members, and governance forums.
11. Establish and monitor resilience KPIs, performance metrics, maturity assessments, and programme effectiveness across the EMEA.
12. Represent the bank on industry resilience forums, including the UK Finance Business & Operational Continuity Committee (BOCC), acting as a 24/7 contact during systemic financial incidents.
13. Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders across business functions and geographic regions.
14. Lead Business Continuity planning activities, including Business Impact Analyses (BIA), resilience assessments, dependency mapping, and recovery strategy development.
15. Ensure all business units maintain effective and current Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) and partner with Technology teams to align continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
16. Act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders on resilience, continuity planning, and recovery capabilities, ensuring alignment with organisational objectives, regulatory expectations, and industry best practice.

Skills and Experience Required:

1. Strong experience in Major Incident Management, Crisis Management, Business Continuity, Operational Resilience, or a related discipline. Experience within complex, global, highly regulated environments.
2. Proven ability to manage high-profile incidents involving cyber threats, technology outages, operational disruption, geopolitical events, and reputational risk. Strong experience presenting to Executive Committees, Boards, Risk Committees, and regulators.
3. Demonstrated capability to advise C-suite and senior leadership teams during crisis situations. Experience establishing and leading Incident Command Structures and Crisis Management Teams.
4. Excellent stakeholder management skills across technical, operational, and executive audiences. Ability to remain calm under pressure, prioritise competing demands, make sound decisions, and delegate effectively.
5. Strong commitment to continuous improvement and resilience maturity. CBCI (Certificate of the Business Continuity Institute).
6. ITIL Foundation certification.