Job Summary

The Director, Complaints and Continuous Improvement is responsible for leading the central complaints management team that handles complex and escalated complaints, including matters referred by regulators, senior management and FIDReC. The role provides independent oversight from frontline teams to ensure client outcomes are reviewed fairly, consistently and in line with the Bank’s policies, regulatory expectations and client-centric standards. The role is accountable for driving timely complaint resolution, maintaining strong governance and quality assurance over complaint closures, identifying root causes and translating complaint insights into sustainable process, product, control and client experience improvements.

Key Responsibilities

Central Complaints Management and Escalations
•    Lead and oversee the central team responsible for managing complex and escalated complaints, including complaints referred by regulators, senior management, and other formal escalation channels.
•    Ensure complaints are assessed, investigated and closed in a fair, consistent, client-centric and evidence-based manner.
•    Provide independent review and challenge of complaint outcomes, separate from frontline teams, to support fair client outcomes and strengthen confidence in the complaints process.
•    Oversee the handling of sensitive, high-risk or high-impact complaints, including those involving vulnerable clients, conduct risk, potential inappropriate sales, fraud/scam concerns or reputational risk.

Timely Resolution and Case Discipline
•    Ensure complaints managed by the team are closed within the Bank’s stipulated turnaround times and regulatory timelines, with timely escalation where risk of delay arises.
•    Maintain strong case discipline, including clear ownership, progress tracking, timely stakeholder follow-up, proper documentation and appropriate client updates.
•    Monitor complaint ageing, overdue cases, repeat escalations and emerging bottlenecks, and drive corrective actions with relevant stakeholders.

Governance, Quality Assurance and Process Adherence
•    Establish and maintain robust governance over complaints handled by the central team, ensuring adherence to the Bank’s complaints management framework, policies, standards and operating procedures.
•    Drive quality assurance over complaint investigations, outcome rationale, client communications, remediation decisions and closure documentation.
•    Ensure complaint outcomes are supported by clear facts, evidence, fair assessment and appropriate management oversight where required.
•    Identify process gaps, control weaknesses or inconsistent handling practices and ensure these are remediated in a timely and sustainable manner.

Regulatory and Senior Management Engagement
•    Oversee the preparation of timely, accurate and well-substantiated responses to regulators, senior management and internal governance forums.
•    Ensure responses and case positions are balanced, client-centric, factually accurate and aligned with applicable policies, regulations and internal standards.
•    Provide clear and concise management updates on material complaint trends, high-risk cases, systemic issues, remediation actions and emerging conduct or client outcome risks.

Continuous Improvement and Root Cause Management
•    Drive continuous improvement arising from complaint insights, root cause analysis, quality reviews, regulatory feedback and FIDReC outcomes.
•    Partner with frontline, product, process, operations, risk and compliance teams to address recurring complaint drivers and improve client journeys.
•    Translate complaint themes and lessons learnt into practical enhancements, including process simplification, control improvements, training, communication improvements and better client disclosures.
•    Track agreed remediation actions to completion and assess effectiveness in reducing repeat issues and improving client outcomes.

People Leadership and Capability Building
•    Lead, coach and develop the central complaints team to build strong investigative judgement, writing quality, stakeholder management and client outcome assessment capabilities.
•    Set clear performance expectations for case quality, timeliness, risk management, collaboration and client-centric conduct.
•    Promote a culture of fairness, accountability, continuous improvement and constructive challenge in the handling of complaints.

Reporting, Insights and Management Information
•    Develop and maintain meaningful complaint reporting and insights for management and governance forums, including trends, turnaround time performance, quality outcomes, root causes and improvement actions.
•    Use complaint data and case learnings to identify emerging risks, conduct themes, process gaps and opportunities to improve the Bank’s products, services and client communications.
•    Support relevant committees and forums with concise, data-led updates on complaint performance, significant matters and progress of remediation actions.

Risk and Compliance
•    Ensure all complaint handling activities are conducted in line with the Bank’s risk management framework, conduct standards, regulatory obligations and internal policies.
•    Escalate material risks, control gaps, systemic issues, potential client harm or reputational concerns through appropriate governance channels.
•    Maintain audit-ready documentation and support internal reviews, audits, inspections and regulatory queries relating to complaint handling and client outcomes.

People and Talent
•    Set direction and drive high performance by translating strategy into clear direction, aligning individual goals to team outcomes and providing regular, constructive feedback.
•    Develop talent and capability through coaching and career conversations that build critical skills, stretch potential and prepare individuals for future opportunities.
•    Lead by example by role-modelling the Bank’s valued behaviours, upholding strong risk and conduct standards, exercising sound judgment, and creating an inclusive team culture that supports wellbeing, values diverse perspectives, and drives accountability.

Other Responsibilities:
•    Lead the management of complex and escalated complaints, including matters referred by regulators, senior management and FIDReC. 
•    Ensure fair, consistent and client-centric complaint outcomes, with independent review and challenge separate from frontline teams. 
•    Oversee timely complaint resolution, ensuring cases are progressed within internal turnaround times and regulatory expectations. 
•    Maintain strong complaint governance and case discipline, including clear ownership, documentation, escalation and closure rationale. 
•    Drive quality assurance over complaint handling, client communications, remediation decisions and closure documentation. 
•    Manage high-risk or sensitive complaints, including cases involving vulnerable clients, conduct risk, fraud/scam issues, potential inappropriate sales or reputational concerns. 
•    Prepare and support regulatory, senior management and governance updates, ensuring responses are accurate, balanced, evidence-based and well-substantiated. 
•    Identify root causes and recurring complaint themes, and translate insights into process, product, control and client experience improvements. 
•    Partner with frontline, product, operations, risk and compliance teams to resolve systemic issues and improve client journeys. 
•    Track remediation actions to completion, ensuring agreed improvements are implemented sustainably and effectively. 
•    Develop complaint reporting and insights for management and governance forums, including trends, turnaround time performance, root causes and action progress. 
•    Lead and build team capability, strengthening investigative judgement, writing quality, stakeholder management and client outcome assessment. 
•    Ensure risk and compliance standards are met, with audit-ready documentation and appropriate escalation of material risks or control gaps.

Our Ideal Candidate

•    10+ years of experience working in a regulated, client-facing or risk-sensitive environment, where decisions need to be fair, well-documented and able to withstand review.
•    Familiarity with complaint trends, root cause analysis, remediation tracking or continuous improvement would be advantageous.
•    Experience supporting or coaching others on case handling quality, communication standards or client outcome assessment would be beneficial.
•    Ability to use data, insights or management information to support decision-making, prioritisation and process improvements.
•   Experience handling complex client complaints, escalations, service recovery, investigations, conduct matters, audit, compliance, quality assurance, operations, product governance or process improvement

Role Specific Technical Competencies

• Familiarity with AI, preferably MS Co-Pilot to drive analytics and improvements
• Continuous Improvement and Root cause management/analysis
• Quality Assurance
• Complaint management

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.

Recruitment Assessments

Some of our roles use assessments to help us understand how suitable you are for the role you've applied to. If you are invited to take an assessment, this is great news. It means your application has progressed to an important stage of our recruitment process.

Visit our careers website www.sc.com/careers