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.

Our three strategic priorities are:

• Expand the provision on affordable credit so that the availability of affordable credit increases x10 and provision can be delivered sustainably at the scale required to meet customer needs
• Partner with mainstream banks and financial services to increase provision of services so that mainstream financial services serve customers in vulnerable circumstances, either directly or through funding other providers
• Develop new products and services to address market gaps so that the right products exist to meet the different needs of people in vulnerable circumstances and systems are in place to support ongoing product development for these customers

You can find more information on us and our work at www.fair4allfinance.org.uk.

The Context: 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 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.

This means you will be passionate about delivery – getting things done with others and delivering value for money and great outcomes. You’ll have experience of working on commercial contracting and negotiations and enjoy both the broad negotiations and ensuring that the details are covered well in contracts to ensure all sides are clear from the outset on what they are committing to. As we are a small team, you’ll be content to roll your sleeves up and get the job done, whatever that entails.

You will be joining a collaborative and purpose driven team overseen by a committed board. Our team is drawn from a range of backgrounds spanning leaders and changemakers across financial services and social purpose sectors. The reach and influence of our team makes this an exciting place to work and enables us to engage important stakeholders at the highest levels.

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

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

Context: Our segmentation model, demonstrates at least 20.3m people are in financial vulnerable circumstances. We work with providers and customers to co-design the propositions that will best serve our target customer segments. You will:

• 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.
• 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 (including managing open source sharing of key learning and management of evaluation evidence, and intellectual property dissemination).
• lead on setting up the appropriate funding models to optimise risk and reward sharing as well as appropriate structures for all propositions testing, recognising the commercial risk concerns for partners. This will require working closely with the investment team from inception, building the case for investment, right through to legal completion.
• be accountable for overseeing the testing of propositions where the financial arrangements themselves are the key aspect of the test (i.e. not the customer facing product) – for example testing the effectiveness of guarantees to underwrite risk or financial subsidies to reduce delivery costs and encourage adoption of solutions.
• Oversee the set up and delivery and evaluation of pilots and propositions, collaborating with partner organisations including using ongoing insights and learnings to be agile and pivot as appropriate to achieve successful outcomes and impact.

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

Our strategic planning involves encouraging new entrants into this market and persuading existing providers to also serve customers who are underserved. You will:

• support our work to stimulate new entrants and/or encourage provider pivots by designing appropriate risk and commercial mechanisms. This will require consultation with providers to understand their risk appetite and what needs to be true to enable them to deliver propositions to customers they do not currently serve, or enter a market they are not currently in.
• 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 (drawing down on the existing evaluation partnership agreement that we have in place) and use your commercial acumen to get to the bottom of what needs to change to enable these propositions to become widely available.
• will determine how proposition tests are commissioned to enable the data necessary for these evaluations to be captured, including capturing cost to serve details, qualitative customer and provider feedback and quantitative outcomes data.

3) Reporting, monitoring and pilot partner management, 10%

• 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.
• Lead regular meetings with pilot providers working with programme managers to maintain records of progress on delivery milestones, insights, learnings and outcomes.

4) Financial and procurement management and framework utilisation, 10%

• Work closely with our procurement team and in house counsel adhering to our commercial frameworks for supply .
• Manage suppliers and contracts to ensure the obligations are fulfilled to the appropriate quality and timelines.
• 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.

Brand and stakeholder management

• Work with external stakeholders and delivery partners at C-Suite level to deliver key priorities.
• Represent Fair4All Finance strategy and purpose clearly and effectively to external partners and stakeholders .
• Communicate, promote and present our pilot and propositions work and learnings to key external stakeholders and at external events and conferences as required.

People

• This role does not have explicit people management responsibilities, but the role holder will play an important role in supporting the Fair4All Finance team to develop their own understanding of finance providers and their customer, financial and operational challenges and in living the Fair4All Finance values.
• Communicate, promote and present our pilot and propositions work and learnings to the wider Fair4All Finance team including our Board and Leadership team.
• Deputise for the Director of Innovation and Development where appropriate.
• We are a small team so be prepared to jump in and support on all aspects of the work we do across our wide portfolio to help cover for busier periods including supporting colleagues to oversee other existing pilot arrangements you are not directly involved in.

Personal Specification

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.

To Apply

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

“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.

Fair4AllFinance knows that thoughtful and progressive support of people in their work creates mutually positive benefits. A benefits package has been created that enables a culture where people thrive and to:

• Enable people to manage their time to maintain a healthy balance with a focus on outcomes rather than hours
• Provide support for people to sustain their financial, physical, and mental health
• Enable people at different life stages to support those they care for and give back to their communities
• Ensure that our team can easily access everyday healthcare for mental and physical health and at a low personal cost