Head of Customer Resolution & Hardship

Job description

The Head of Customer Resolution & Hardship leads enterprise-wide Customer Resolution, Dispute Resolution and Hardship Care across Australia & New Zealand, ensuring customers experiencing difficulty receive fair, consistent and compliant support while balancing customer outcomes, regulatory obligations and LFS commercial objectives. This highly visible role works with executives, senior leaders and external stakeholders to manage conduct and regulatory risk, strengthen service outcomes and maintain trusted relationships with regulators, dispute resolution schemes, financial counselling bodies and consumer organisations. The role drives compliant, measurable performance, using complaints and hardship insights to identify trends, business risks, systemic issues and continuous improvement opportunities. Responsibilities: Lead, coach and develop complaints and hardship teams, building an engaged, high-performing culture with effective quality assurance, conduct-risk monitoring, succession planning and business continuity. Maintain and improve IDR and EDR frameworks, policies and controls so complaints and hardship matters are identified, recorded, triaged, investigated, resolved and escalated within regulatory timeframes, vulnerability requirements, enterprise risk appetite and key compliance obligations. Lead LFS dispute resolution, complaints handling and hardship standards across Australia and New Zealand, ensuring local regulatory compliance, high-quality service experiences and improved performance against industry peers. Ensure hardship and complaints processes identify and support vulnerable customers, including those experiencing family violence, financial abuse, mental health challenges, bereavement, natural disasters or other circumstances requiring tailored support. · Drive productivity, performance and continuous improvement across IDR, EDR and hardship operations, reducing complaint volume and resolution costs while meeting agreed SLAs and maintaining customer and conduct outcomes. Use complaints and hardship insights to identify customer themes, systemic issues and business risks, escalating accountable actions and preparing executive and board reporting to improve products, processes, customer experience and outcomes. Manage relationships with external dispute resolution schemes, financial counsellors, consumer finance organisations and industry groups, and represent LFS in external matters including VCAT, AFCA and possible systemic issues. Partner with Risk, Customer Care and SBU leaders to deliver best-in-class Hardship Care experiences and outcomes. Oversee outsourced, offshore and third-party providers supporting complaints, dispute resolution or hardship activity, ensuring service delivery, controls, quality, training and customer outcomes meet Latitude standards and regulatory obligations. Support transformation initiatives and agile ways of working at team level. What you will bring: 10+ years’ experience in financial services in a disputes or hardship discipline. 5+ years’ experience in people leadership. 3+ years’ experience managing external stakeholder relationships with regulatory or industry bodies. Strong working knowledge of Australian and New Zealand complaints, hardship, responsible lending, privacy, debt collection, external dispute resolution and customer vulnerability obligations in financial services. Demonstrated ability to use complaints, hardship, quality assurance and operational data to identify emerging risks, customer harm, performance issues and continuous improvement opportunities. Proven track record in a comparable operations leadership role. Strong leadership experience, including success in leading multi-site and multi-functional teams. Experience in process improvement leadership with proven, quantifiable results. Experience successfully delivering multi-disciplinary projects, including process, IT and people elements. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to influence at all levels. Experience preparing and presenting evidence-based reporting to executive, board, risk, compliance and operational governance forums. Demonstrated success leading effective change management. Flexible and resilient in managing large workloads, shifting priorities and unpredictable demands. A dynamic but measured personality with excellent presentation and influencing skills. High personal drive, motivation and independence in progressing matters. Sometimes the best candidates don’t have 100% of what is listed above, but if you have most and are confident, you’d be a good fit, we’d love to hear from you! Sound like you? That's a good sign! In return for your energy and ideas, we offer a flexible working environment and great compensation. We always support a safe, healthy, engaging, and productive working environment for all employees and workers, whether that be in your home and office, or a combination of both. We make it possible – for our customers, our partners, and our people. We believe doing great work starts with feeling supported. Our values, take ownership , pursue excellence , win together , and create tomorrow , aren't just words. They show up in how we work, how we lead, and how we look after our team. We make it possible… to spend more time with your loved ones – with an extra week of paid leave each year through our Take 5 initiative. to balance work and life – with a hybrid working model, giving you the flexibility to work from home while connecting in the office. to put your wellbeing first – with Sonder , a 24/7 support app for mental and physical wellness. to access great financial benefits – with discounts on Latitude products and services. When our people thrive, everything else follows. Successful applicants will be required to complete a background check (including criminal history and bankruptcy check) prior to commencement of employment.