Head of Income

**Who are we?**

Thames Water is the UK’s largest water and wastewater company. We make a daily difference to our 15 million customers by supplying 2.6 billion litres of water through 32,000 km of pipes, keeping taps flowing and toilets flushing.

At Thames Water, every one of our actions, big and small, matters every day. Water is essential to life, so our business is always open.

**What you’ll be doing**

The **Head of Income** is responsible for assuring revenue and billing in line with business plans for household customers direct and Water only companies. The role holder is also responsible for assure the accuracy of budget and forecasting of Revenue/Billing to cash, collection rates, and Bad Debt Charge, with the support of the Head of Credit Risk. The role defines the change roadmap to enable accurate, timely, and affordable billing, and all associated processes and governance. This is a business-critical role.

Thames Water is undergoing significant business transformation spanning all areas of the organisation and as such the environment is maturing, challenging yet hugely rewarding. This role focuses on leadership of critical areas including revenue assurance and forecasting, household billing of metered and unmeasured customers, home move, and business systems. This role is somewhat newly formed and therefore the role holder is required to review customer experience, operating model, organisational design, and data/reporting needs. Therefore, the work is very diverse, can be ambiguous, and requires someone that thrives when given autonomy to deliver business-critical customer processes and financial performance.

The **Head of Income** will be able to work with the most senior stakeholders in the business and provide expertise and results to ensure the business commitments are managed and achieved. Due to the nature of the work, the role holder will also be expected to engage with executive directors, board members, external stakeholders, and our regulator.

The role sits as part of the Financial Customer Care and Income directorate as part of the wider Retail team, where you will need to build effective relationships to achieve exceptional customer satisfaction and strong financial performance. You will also need to build strong collaborative relationships with other business areas including finance, digital, and risk.

The accountabilities and responsibilities are important, complex, and vital to the success of Thames Water. Strong leadership, change management, motivation, and financial acumen are critical as the role holder to successfully deliver positive customer and business impact through direct and indirect teams.

**What you should bring to the role**
- Lead a direct team of multidisciplined senior managers
- Own the centralised budget and forecasting process for revenue and billing, assuring alignment to Allowable Revenue through core assumptions and inputs
- Work directly with Transformation to deliver a continuously improving customer journey and experience, underpinned by process control
- Act as the key interface with finance to deliver key financial outcomes including Revenue and Billing values
- Create and manage end-to-end risk and control frameworks, in line with centralised risk management
- Own the customer onboarding and move process, always ensuring a positive customer experience
- Assure the accuracy of billing, reducing customer dissatisfaction and increasing propensity to pay
- Own core billing system efficacy and efficiency, supporting end-to-end process teams in assuring a positive customer experience
- Lead the performance improvement and mitigation of billing exceptions
- Create strong alignment and ways of working with key commercial partners to deliver improved customer experience, including meter reading, payments processes, and exceptions management.
- Have a strong grasp of risk management within your area and those areas that impact Income.

**What’s in it for you?**

Our competitive salary and package include a bonus, car allowance, private healthcare, an excellent contributory pension, and 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with length of service.

Thames Water is a dynamic, rewarding, and diverse place to work, with opportunities around every corner. If you join our team, you’ll enjoy a fulfilling career, flexible working arrangements, and a wider benefits scheme including our benefits hub, which is packed full of offers and information to save you money and support your well-being.

Find out more about working at Thames Water

We deliver life's essential service so our customers, communities, and the environment can thrive. This means, that when a crisis happens, we all rally around to support our customers. As part of your role, you’ll be required to participate in a rota to provide Customer Incident Support, as requested by the Company from time to time. This may be by supporting our customers on the frontline as an Ambassador or being p