As Head of Payment Product and Strategy at Aldermore, I oversee the development, implementation, and management of the bank's payment products and services. My role involves strategic planning, product development, market analysis, and collaboration with various internal and external stakeholders to ensure Aldermore’s payment offerings are competitive, compliant, and aligned with customer needs. In this position I am also responsible for leading multiple cross-functional agile teams to deliver all payments products and updates, and have recently implemented a fully automated payment model for our new mortgage platform on schedule, and with zero critical bugs reported post-launch. I also collaborate with both 3rd party providers, as well as external Payment schemes, such as the Bank of England, Pay.Uk and the PSR.

Responsible primarily for the Bank’s SME Loan products but with involvement in leading initiatives across the full SME product set. My role is to define the customer experience, drive the commercial performance of the Bank’s SME business, and ensure strong application of the Bank’s Risk Management Framework across the SME product set.

The purpose of my role is to ensure that every change in the payment domain makes the Bank more effective, more pioneering and better able to improve the customer experience. I do this by acting as a conduit between Portfolio Directors, Programme Managers and Business Stakeholders/sponsors to ensure the right Business solution is being developed to enable the business to achieve the necessary benefits.My main responsibilities include ensuring customer experience / user centred design is employed in all projects, and building robust cases to ensure the Bank makes smart investments to achieve these outcomes. In addition I am responsible for identifying the optimal path and prioritisation of changes in order to achieve the best returns on investment as well as the approval of the End to End solution design processes – both ‘As Is’ and ‘To Be’ across the assigned Portfolio. I am also responsible for the review and sign off of all testing activities from scripts to closure, ensuring there is traceability from business case to delivery.

In this role I was responsible for supporting the Head of Payment Scheme and Transformation in leading the development and delivery of the Bank’s Payment Change requirements, Treasury Payment Operations and Scheme management, functions whilst ensuring regulatory compliance and adherence to scheme rules and standards are maintained.I was also required to lead and deliver all small scale payment change on time, within budget and within scheme compliance.

In this role I was responsible for engaging, managing and communicating with all business areas impacted by the Cheque imaging project. I was also responsible for the managing and delivery of training into impacted areas such as the Branch network, Fraud and Payment Operations.I am also responsible for defining and managing the delivery of operational Go/No Go criteria, as well as identifying, documenting and gaining approval for all operational risks that the project may carry into live running.

Responsible for leading the day to day operational teams, pro-actively redressing customers for a variety of account and non-compliance issues such as CCA Loan statements, mortgage arrears and ERC overcharging, as well as both business and personal current account customers across multiple sites. Day to day activities included managing a team of team leaders to deliver against operational requirements in line with financial budgets, workflow allocation to ensure all regulatory requirements and timescales are achieved and performance reporting to the business.

Responsibilities in my current role are to lead, develop and motivate a PPIcase handling team to deliver operational requirements in respect ofcomplex PPI complaints including FOS, Executive and business driven PPIpast business reviews, building effective capability to ensure casehandling objectives can be achieved, whilst continually achieving allquality, regulatory and procedural standards.My role also involves managing processes within the wider area as well as establishing and managing key stakeholders and external partners

As a team leader I am responsible for leading, motivating and developing a team of 12 staff to handle existing customer queries, with a strong emphasis on delivering additional product sales and achieving a high level of customer service by putting the customer at the heart of everything we do, through regular one to one progress meetings, reviews and appraisals, as well as designing and implementing incentives schemes that add value. My role involves facilitating advisor learning in all aspects of their role including systems, product knowledge, banking regulation and handling difficult customer conversations, following HR processes where necessary. I am also responsible for first line defence risk checks as well as all advisor recruitment and I provide support and training to induction and academy coaches.I frequently step outside my role in order to support the wider operation, providing coaching and support to my peer group and the prodigy team leaders, facilitating meetings and organising team leader schedules to ensure the contact centre is supervised effectively.

In the role of Integration Manager I was responsible for project managing a number of key initiatives which were considered critical to the end goal of integrating A&L into Santander’s operating model. I worked as part of a small team that scoped, developed, managed and delivered a significant change agenda for a sales operation of over 1200 staff. Throughout the role I was required to display excellent organisation, communication and problem solving skills in order to ensure that such a challenging change programme was delivered whilst minimising operational impact and maintaining sales productivity.

My main responsibilities were to lead, coach and develop a team of mortgage and protection advisors in order to meet and exceed sales targets. I was also responsible for tracking all sales enquiries from initial enquiry through to completion and providing comprehensive MI to the leadership team.I was also responsible for guiding advisors through CeMAP training and qualifications and on to competent advisor status. In addition to training and developing staff I monitored interviews and sales to ensure they meet compliance standards and risk is managed appropriately.