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The Function & Team
The Operations Manager is responsible for the day-to-day management and delivery of Lending Operations, supporting the administration and servicing of the £1.8bn lending portfolio. Sitting between the Head of Operations and the operational teams, the role translates strategic direction into consistent, controlled and efficient execution.
The role provides management oversight across the Lending Operations teams, ensuring consistent service and control standards, effective resource allocation and clear ownership of activities and hand-offs. This is a hands-on people management and operational leadership role, responsible for team performance, operational delivery, controls, capacity and continuous improvement.
By owning day-to-day operational management, the role enables the Head of Operations to focus on strategic priorities, senior stakeholders and platform development, while providing clear visibility of performance, capacity and emerging operational risks.
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The Roles Key Responsibilities
Team & Performance Management
- Provide day-to-day leadership, line management and coaching to Team Leads / Senior Analysts across Lending Operations, deputising for the Head of Operations on operational matters as required.
- Own the operating rhythm for Lending Operations, including daily/weekly stand-ups, workload prioritisation, capacity management and escalation routes, ensuring a consistent management cadence across teams.
- Set and monitor individual and team performance against clear KPIs and SLAs, providing regular feedback, coaching and performance management where required.
- Proactively identify capacity pressures and resourcing gaps, including periods of concentrated activity, and coordinate the prioritisation or flexing of resource across teams to maintain service and control standards.
- Support recruitment, onboarding, development and succession planning across Lending Operations, working with the Head of Operations to build capability and resilience within the team.
Operational Oversight
The Operations Manager provides consistent day-to-day management oversight across the Lending Operations areas, ensuring common standards of operational delivery, service and control, while technical subject-matter expertise remains within the respective teams:
- Deal Operations – completion hand-offs into servicing, static data set-up and day-one operational readiness for new transactions.
- In-Life Operations – ongoing loan servicing, drawdowns, amendments and borrower/investor-facing operational activity.
- Cash Operations – payment processing and oversight, cash management activity and associated operational controls.
- Control & Reconciliation – cash and position reconciliations, breaks management and timely clearance against control deadlines.
- Life Management – arrears, billing and adjustments processing, with particular focus on accuracy, timeliness and downstream finance impacts.
Ensure work moves effectively across team boundaries, with clear ownership of hand-offs, dependencies and service standards, intervening where necessary to prevent gaps or delays impacting borrowers, investors or internal stakeholders.
Controls, Risk & Data Quality
- Ensure Lending Operations operates in accordance with documented processes, controls and agreed service standards, maintaining appropriate evidence and supporting ongoing audit and regulatory readiness.
- Own the day-to-day coordination and resolution of operational incidents, control failures and service issues, ensuring root causes are understood, remediation actions are clearly owned and issues are driven through to timely closure.
- Identify emerging operational risks, control weaknesses and recurring process failures, escalating material matters promptly to the Head of Operations with clear recommendations and proposed remediation.
- Own the day-to-day application of data quality standards across the Lending platform (Aspire), working with the Head of Operations, Finance and relevant data owners to prevent recurring data issues impacting downstream processes and reporting.
- Maintain and continuously improve Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), controls and operational documentation across Lending Operations.
- Support audit and regulatory review activity, ensuring requests are coordinated effectively and appropriate evidence trails are maintained.
Management Information & Reporting
- Build and maintain meaningful management information providing clear and timely visibility of operational volumes, backlogs, SLA performance, capacity, control issues and emerging risks across Lending Operations.
- Use MI to proactively identify pressure points, deteriorating service levels or control risks and coordinate appropriate management action.
- Provide the Head of Operations and wider IF&O leadership team with clear, concise reporting on operational performance, capacity and areas requiring intervention.
- Track delivery against departmental goals and OKRs, identifying dependencies and flagging at-risk items early with clear actions required to bring delivery back on track.
Process Improvement & AI Adoption
- Identify and drive opportunities to simplify, standardise and automate operational processes, reducing manual activity and strengthening scalability and control.
- Champion the appropriate adoption of AI and automation tools within Lending Operations, translating successful local practices into scalable and reusable processes.
- Support the ongoing development of the Lending platform (Aspire), representing operational requirements and helping ensure system and data improvements translate into effective day-to-day processes.
- Work closely with the Head of Operations, Finance, Technology and other stakeholders to identify recurring operational pain points and translate them into sustainable process, data or technology solutions.
- Embed continuous improvement within the team, encouraging individuals to challenge inefficient processes and identify opportunities to improve service, control and operational resilience.
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Experience
Essential
- Strong understanding of lending and financial operations, with experience across multiple stages of the operational lifecycle including transaction onboarding, loan servicing, cash movements, payments and reconciliations, and an understanding of the downstream impact on Finance and financial reporting.
- Strong financial acumen, with the ability to understand and challenge cash movements, reconciliations, interest and fee calculations, operational accounting impacts and financial controls.
- Proven people management experience within a financial services operations environment, ideally within lending, private credit, asset management or fund servicing.
- Track record of managing multiple workstreams or teams concurrently, with the ability to prioritise effectively and reallocate resource in response to changing demands.
- Confident using data and management information to monitor operational performance, including SLAs, backlogs, capacity and emerging risks.
- Strong controls mindset, with experience supporting audit, regulatory review or other assurance processes.
- Demonstrable experience improving operational processes, controls or ways of working within a growing or changing environment.
- Strong stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to work effectively across Finance, Operations, Technology and senior leadership.
Desirable
- Experience within private credit, lending or a comparable asset management environment.
- Experience using loan servicing, fund administration or similar operational platforms.
- Experience supporting platform implementation, operational change or automation initiatives.
- Exposure to AI-enabled process improvement within an operations environment.
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