I worked in a menswear store, before embarking on a career in Finance!
My three most important career moves were as follows:
1. My first job was in retail, working in a menswear store, however the company went out of business within six months of me joining. This led me to getting a job in a call centre, taking customer service calls for a major Electronics company.
2. My experience in the call centre opened up similar roles in other sectors, i successfully applied for a role for a large financial company where i initially took customer service calls with respect to customer's financial products. Whilst at this company i later successfully applied for a promotion to a more technical, admin-based role that took me away from customer services.
3. The experience gained in the more technical role opened up more technical roles for me in other financial institutions. After a period of time in that role i successfully applied for a role within Standard Life/Phoenix where i have worked in three roles to date. The first of those was in Fund Controls, where i managed funds on Standard Life's Insured Funds platform. My second role was in Regulatory Relationships, managing the relationship between Phoenix and it's regulators. My current role is within Operational Governance and Risk, focusing on the risks to the business and ensuring these are mitigated.
I work in Operational Governance and Risk, in the Operations function.
In Operational Governance and Risk, the role is primarily focused on the maintenance of the operational risk and control framework for Phoenix Group, within the Operations function, ensuring monthly analysis of the control environment is conducted and challenged in line with the Phoenix Risk Management Framework (RMF) and Internal Control Framework (ICF).
The varied workload and being part of a great team.
Operational Governance and Risk is part of the wider Operations function within Phoenix. Operations is a large function, with a number of teams who all perform different tasks and activities. The result is i can be involved in, or have exposure to, a variety of different tasks/activities which keeps things interesting. I am also lucky that within Operational Governance and Risk, i work in a great team, who are very supportive.
Have a goal in mind, and work towards achieving it.
When i joined the first financial institution i worked for, initially working in customer services, i had two goals in mind:
1. I knew Customer Services was not for me long-term, and i wanted to move to a more admin based role as soon as possible. I achieved this within a year of joining the first financial institution i worked for.
2. Standard Life had a great reputation and were well known in the City i worked in as being a great place to work. When i took my first job in financial services my goal was to ultimately join Standard Life but i knew i required some experience in the industry before doing so. After two years in Financial Services i successfully applied for my first role at Standard Life. This was a great decision for my career and i remain at Standard Life/Phoenix to this day, many years later.
Being a part of improving Phoenix's reputation with it's regulators.
I joined the Regulatory Relationship team at a time when it was expanding, following Phoenix's acquisition of Standard Life. During my time in this team, we worked hard to meet the ever-increasing demands of the regulator's and vastly improved Phoenix's relationship with it's regulator's, despite the company undergoing a period of significant change.
