Associate Director - Commercial

Role Purpose:

About Fair4All Finance

Fair4All Finance is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2019 to improve the financial wellbeing of people in vulnerable circumstances by increasing access to fair, affordable and appropriate financial products and services. Our funding comes from The Dormant Assets Scheme. The scheme makes it possible for money in dormant bank and building society accounts to be used to help good causes.

There are at least 20.3m people in the UK in vulnerable financial circumstances, who are poorly served or unfairly excluded from mainstream financial services. That’s almost half of adults in the UK.

Our vision is of a society where the long-term financial wellbeing of all people is supported by a fair and accessible financial sector.

Innovation and Development 

As we continue our exciting growth plans to deliver on our ambitious goals and refreshed strategy at Fair4All Finance, following additional funding from the Dormant Assets Scheme, we are seeking an Associate Director Commercial to join our Innovation and Development Team.

The role involves delivering a portfolio of work which includes completing, negotiating and managing innovative product pilots with commercial and mainstream financial providers, Fintech providers and not for profit community lenders; supporting programmes and transactions on our technology workstream; considering ad hoc strategic opportunities for market interventions and transformations.

Role Purpose:

This is a brilliant opportunity to join a growing and dynamic team working to make the financial services sector fairer for everyone. Millions of people are unable to access the mainstream products and services that meet their financial needs and have to choose between going without essentials or turning to high-cost credit or illegal money lenders. Without safety nets like credit, insurance or savings, everyday life events or financial shocks can tip people into increasingly vulnerable circumstances.

One of Fair4All Finance’s key strategic priorities, and a focus of the Innovation and Development team, is to transform the market, to test and deliver the right products to all customers who need them including dramatically improving access to credit, insurance and resilience products by attracting new entrants, scaling existing providers and supporting mainstream providers to diversify their offerings.

A key part of our strategy is to test and scale product propositions, working in partnership with providers, and, where successful, to scale these propositions up for long term success. We do this by codesigning propositions that work for the customer, commercial arrangements that work for the provider, societal outcomes that deliver for the funders and stakeholders.

The Associate Director – Commercial will lead on the commercial lifecycle of proposition tests, meeting potential partners and developing a pipeline of opportunities through to procurement (where appropriate) or running a transparent competition via a subsidy scheme, bid assessment, contract negotiation with significant providers of lending, insurance and savings products. You will work with those providers to oversee the successful setup and delivery including building in how we measure the success of the pilot or proposition and evaluate the impact.

Also key to the role is liaising with the Head of Proposition, Design and Development to design end to end products that meet the needs of people in financially vulnerable circumstances. Strong collaboration with other members of the team is also essential to build the evidence base (economic, value for money and societal impact) which you will then build into business cases for long term funding for these propositions, or alternative financial support. You will work flexibly across our portfolio of partnerships and propositions as it develops.

You will also engage with the Investment team to:

• Establish appropriate commercial agreements, investment structures and legal vehicles to safeguard our funding.
• Make clear and evidenced recommendations to our Investment Committee on the case for investment into our product and service pilot propositions.
• Oversee Innovation and Development team input into our ongoing portfolio management and reporting.

Key Responsibilities:

Delivery of Strategic Priorities

• Develop and scale new proposition pilots through commercial partnerships, 60%

o   Work with the team to be a key contributor in developing a pipeline of opportunities and potential partners to pilot products and propositions and lead on major market engagement exercises for key programmes of our work.

o   Lead on the process of selecting and appointing the providers who can deliver tests of those propositions and in setting up the diligence process and contractual arrangements for iterative testing and learning, robust data capture, and for their subsequent scaling if successful 

• Design and structuring of long-term financial instruments and subsidies to enable scale up, 20%

You will:

o   Support our work to stimulate new entrants and/or encourage provider pivots by designing appropriate risk and commercial mechanisms. 

o   Be responsible for using early and final evaluation evidence to build the business case for the ongoing delivery of the proposition pilots and scaling them up in the future.

• Reporting, monitoring and pilot partner management, 10%

o   Oversee reporting and monitoring of pilot and proposition work as required supporting appropriate input and commentary into our portfolio management and financial tracking of commitments.

• Financial and procurement management and framework utilisation, 10% 

o   Work closely with our procurement team and in house counsel adhering to our commercial frameworks for supply.

o   Manage suppliers and contracts to ensure the obligations are fulfilled to the appropriate quality and timelines.

o   Work with the leadership team to set appropriate budgets for work to deliver value for money and oversee financial monitoring of Innovation and Development pilots and projects.

For further details please see the Careers4Change website

Skills and Experience:

Essential experience and capabilities

• A high tolerance for complexity and ambiguity as well as being a self-starter, with the ability to take commercial arrangements from scoping through to procurement, delivery, learning and evaluation, closure or scaling up.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills including ability to operate in a multi-stakeholder, multi-funder environment and bring clarity to complexity .
• Experience of financial services especially as regards consumer facing propositions and the commercial arrangements in place for their delivery.
• Contract and Supplier Management skills – The ability to work collaboratively with suppliers, being able to iterate and learn within proposition pilot experiences to contribute to improved supplier and outcome performance and utilise, where relevant, contract structures for extensions, variations, transfers, data management.
• Fluency in commercial contractual arrangements and in the management of external counsel and specialist consulting expertise where additional insight is needed. To be highly numerate with a keen understanding of structuring business cases and commercial models.
• Experience working alongside investment professionals to structure arrangements where lending capital is provided to enable the delivery of financial services.
• Highly numerate with a keen understanding of structuring commercial deals to work for all parties.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong organisational skills and attention to detail.
• People management experience and skills, and the ability and willingness to represent our organisation externally and with senior stakeholders.

Desirable experience and capabilities

• Experience in working with the public sector, ideally with the civil service, and an understanding of how to make the economic and social case for interventions with some understanding of subsidy, procurement, and additionality.

Please forward your CV and provide an answer to the following sift question (in 250 words or fewer) via the Careers4Change website:

“What attracted you to Fair4All Finance, and what excites you about this role and our mission?”

 All applicants must have an existing Right to Work in the UK.

Fair4All Finance is committed to being a diverse organisation that is truly representative of the people and communities we serve. We are an equal opportunities employer with an inclusive environment where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop and all team members can contribute to their fullest potential.

Job title: Associate Director-Commercial

Location: Hybrid/ London office & WFH

Reporting To: Director of Innovation & Development

Contract:  Full time permanent/open to flexibility

Salary: £75,000-£80,000

Date Closes: Thursday 9th April