Head of Underwriting

**Location**:Hybrid working with 5 days per fortnight in the Customer Service Centre (Leek, Staffordshire) and the remaining time remotely.

**Employment type**:Full-time, permanent position.

**Salary**:up to £60,000 depending on experience

**Working hours**:35 hours per week, worked flexibly.

**The Organisation**

Leek Building Society is an award winning, highly admired, local mutual building society that is owned and trusted by its members and were on a mission to become even stronger.

Were a great place to work too with a strong sense of family in a recent staff survey, 97% of colleagues said that they were proud to work for Leek Building Society, recommending us as a great place to work. And we want to make things even better.

Were also a socially responsible employer with an unflinching focus on making a positive difference to the lives of our members, employees, and the local community.

Youll be joining the business at a fantastic time of growth, with a transformational investment in our premises, people, and products along with other exciting projects like the launch of our digital platform which will benefit both our staff and members.

If youve a passion for delivering excellent customer outcomes this could be just the opportunity for you

**Job Purpose & Scope**

Through leadership and management of both the Underwriting function and the Financial Support function, ensure that mortgage credit risk is met, activity is within regulatory requirements and customer outcomes are appropriate.

Specifically lead and manage the performance of the Financial Support team, whose core responsibility is the delivery of positive, appropriate and sustainable outcomes for our customers, which help them to maintain and regain financial stability.

**Duties and Key Responsibilities**

**Policy & Regulation**
- Maintain the Societys Financial Support policy and drive improvements to the Responsible Lending Policy ensuring implementation across the Financial Support and Underwriting teams.
- Maintain the Financial Support and Mortgage Underwriting T&C scheme ensuring activity is in line with regulation, policy and ensuring good customer journeys and outcomes.
- Remain up to date with industry best practice for both Financial Support and Mortgage Lending activities.
- Maintain a detailed understanding of all Financial Support and Mortgage Lending related regulation to provide assurance, guidance and challenge to senior management and Board with regard to the impacts on the Society.
- Obtain clarification of legal matters affecting mortgages from relevant external professional bodies.

**Monitoring & Reporting**
- Identify and provide recommendations for improvements to processes, systems, procedures and controls.
- Monitor the implementation of change within Financial Support and Underwriting through key risk indicators.
- Oversee arrears and forbearance performance and minimises risks for the Financial Support function.
- Prioritise caseloads across the teams based on the assessment of risk.
- Provide senior management with regular reporting and provide advice, as required, regarding the status of the individual business area responsibilities together with any associated risks to the Society.
- Proactively review financial support cases using findings to inform lending policy and assess underwriting quality. Highlight trends in respect of brokers to inform panel management.

**Operational & Conduct Management**
- Proactively identify process and strategy improvement across the business areas.
- Ensure compliance to policy and procedures, thus minimising conduct risk exposure.
- Decision making for mandate referrals across both the Financial Support and Underwriting areas at the level agreed by Credit Risk Forum.
- Manage the internal/external activities necessary for delivering positive, sustainable outcomes for our customers in line with defined conduct standards.
- Coach and develop team members to produce better outcomes for customers, whilst minimising risks to the Society.
- Manage customer accounts through early identification of financial distress by pro-active customer contact.
- Successfully influence the outcome for both the customer and company, limiting the escalation of arrears to litigation, with a satisfactory customer outcome.
- Through case management, build and maintain the customer relationship for all customers in arrears building a financial profile whilst gathering information from the customer in order to negotiate a sustainable payment plan.
- Ensure all processes and strategies fully consider the needs of vulnerable customers.
- Provide support to Senior Management with regard to risk events, risk register reviews and control effectiveness assessments relating to Arrears and Collections.

To carry out any other duties as may reasonably be required

**Person Specification**

**Qualifications & Knowledge**

Essential
- Knowledge and understanding of Consumer Duty requirements.
- Extensi