Head of Strategic Risk & Resilience

Bristol, England, United Kingdom

6/3/2025

We've an exciting opportunity for a Head of Strategic Risk and Resilience to join our AXA Health Risk team. Reporting to our Director of Risk, Governance, and Conduct for AXA Health, you’ll be responsible for driving the Risk and Resilience agenda in our Health business, with a very clear understanding of those factors that drive the Health risk profile.

As a senior member of the 1st Line Health Risk team, you’ll play a key role in driving a customer-centric culture throughout AXA UK Health, deepening the capability of the Health business to understand and manage the risks associated, whilst maintaining a strong and pervasive focus on customer outcomes. You'll hold a leading role in assuring operational resilience in an organisation undergoing transformation and change. You’ll provide leadership and line management to multiple Risk Managers and Analysts, with a key focus on professional development and fostering high standards of professionalism and expertise throughout the team.

At AXA we work smart, empowering our people to balance their time between home and the office in a way that works best for them, their team and our customers. You'll work at least 40% of your week away from home at our offices, moving to the majority of your working week from September 2025. Away from home means either attendance at one of our office locations in Tunbridge Wells, Bristol or Leeds or travelling for the purposes of work.

What you’ll be doing:

• Take the lead in the provision of risk and resilience alongside Enterprise Reporting team providing Health senior management with ongoing insight of their end-to-end risk profile.
• Confirm appropriate measures are in place to monitor and assess management of insurance risk, including profitability, reserving, pricing, underwriting and catastrophe modelling.
• Work with the ExCom-1 to deliver a data-driven, systematic and evidencable understanding of risk, clearly anchored in the end-to-end product lifecycle and customer journeys, with operational solutions that are customer and risk-centric.
• Drive a commercially centric approach alongside the product, pricing, data, operational and support function leadership teams to managing operational risk and resilience that explicitly considers the ‘cost of control’ relative to risk appetite.
• Lead activity to understand the Health Resilience profile for implementation and ongoing compliance with Important Business Services (IBS) requirements with a clear understanding of the key dependencies.
• Own the mechanisms in place to identify and assess key risks within the end-to-end customer journeys, the adequacy and effectiveness of associated controls, aligned to Group and the Health business requirements.
• Working with Risk and Reporting teams to support risk event reporting, risk acceptance processes and remediation activities, undertaking impact, root cause, and read across analysis after a risk event in line with Group requirements.
• Provide key 1st line insights to both Health and UK-level governance forums, representing the Director of Risk at key Health/UK committees as required.
  
  
  

Due to the number of applications we expect to receive for this role, we reserve the right to close this advert earlier than the listed closing date to ensure we’re able to effectively manage interest. Therefore, if you’re interested in joining us at AXA, please don’t hesitate to apply.

What you’ll bring:

• Demonstrable expertise and excellent technical competency in managing Risk and Resilience with a track record of championing good customer outcomes and pragmatic, commercially-minded operational solutions.
• Robust ability to assess, manage, and improve operational resilience in a financial services organisation undergoing change.
• Strong organisational and stakeholder management skills, and a natural comfort in working across complex internal environments.
• Up-to-date awareness of the UK regulator’s expectations of a Health financial services provider, including expertise in working with regulated and non-regulated products.
• In-depth understanding of risk and control assessment and assurance techniques, including Key Risk Indicators, alongside statistical sampling and outcome-based testing.
• Excellent ‘to the point’ report writing and communication skills with an attention to detail.
• People centric leadership style, which drives engagement and ongoing capability building across all levels of the team and wider organisation, building a culture of positive energy, empowerment, creativity and teamwork.
• Experienced in people development skills and evidence of effective performance management, strong coaching and development skills.
  
  
  

As a precondition of employment for this role, you must be eligible and authorised to work in the United Kingdom.

What we offer:

At AXA UK, we’re appreciative of the people who work for us and our rewards package is reviewed regularly to reflect that. You can expect to receive:

• Competitive annual salary of up to £110,000 dependent on experience
• Annual company & performance-based bonus
• Contributory pension scheme (up to 12% employer contributions)
• Life Assurance (up to 10 x annual salary)
• 28 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays
• Private health cover
• Opportunity to buy up to 5 extra days leave or sell up to 5 days leave
• AXA employee discounts
• Wellbeing services & resources
  
  
  

To apply, click on the ‘apply for this job’ button, you’ll then need to log in or create a profile to submit your CV and cover letter. Please ensure that your CV and cover letter are in one document and no greater than two pages, setting out why you are interested in the role and why you’d be a great fit for the position. We’re proud to be an Equal Opportunities Employer and don’t discriminate against employees or potential employees based on protected characteristics. If you have a long-term condition or disability and require adjustments during the application or interview process, we’re proud to offer access to the AXA Accessibility Concierge. For our support, please send an email to [email protected].

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Who we are:

At AXA Health, we help our members be the best version of themselves by providing access to health and wellbeing support for mind and body. We’re transforming our business by developing easy, efficient, digital experiences for our customers. We’re a collective of specialists passionate about helping our members flourish, whether that’s individuals and families, small businesses or huge corporates.