Middle Office Service Manager

Role can be based Salisbury or Edinburgh  At Nucleus, we aim to be the UK’s best loved retirement wealth platform and delivering exceptional customer service plays a vital part in this. The Operations Service Manager is part of the Middle Office team and is responsible for the effective development and delivery of the Middle Office service capability, providing specialist operational support to Front Office where standard processes are unable to resolve more complex queries or cases.  The Operations Service Manager will support Front Office to improve active management of Service delivery for Advisers and help resolve more complex queries by proactively identifying cases requiring attention to ensure the right Customer and Adviser outcomes are achieved. The role ensures that Middle Office provides effective triage, coordination, and end-to-end ownership of complex issues, working collaboratively with Front Office, Back Office, Investment Operations, and other teams to deliver positive Customer and Adviser outcomes. The role proactively identifies cases, service issues, and emerging risks requiring intervention, ensuring timely resolution and the achievement of fair and consistent outcomes. The role will use insights from operational queries, management information, and recurring issues to identify opportunities to enhance processes, guidance, and self-service capabilities. This will help reduce avoidable demand, increase colleague self-sufficiency, and improve the overall customer and adviser experience. Responsibilities • Lead the day-to-day delivery of the Middle Office service, ensuring effective support is provided to Front Office across the core service areas. • Ensure more complex queries and issues are appropriately triaged, owned and coordinated through to resolution. • Develop and maintain strong relationships with Front Office, Back Office, Investment Operations, Product and other relevant teams. • Ensure a clear and coordinated approach to escalations, avoiding duplication of issues or communications across teams. • Provide oversight of significant, complex or recurring service issues and ensure appropriate actions are identified and progressed. • Analyse MI, case data, and operational insight to identify trends, risks, and opportunities for improvement, driving enhancements to guidance, training, and self-service resources that empower Front Office colleagues to resolve queries more effectively and independently. • Ensure the Middle Office maintains appropriate knowledge across its key service areas, including Investment Operations, Transfers In and Benefit payments. • Support the development of specialist capability within the team, including coaching and knowledge sharing. • Work with operational teams to identify root causes of recurring issues and implement sustainable improvements. • Represent Middle Office in relevant operational forums and discussions where specialist service input is required. • Provide clear management information and commentary on Middle Office activity, key issues, trends and improvement opportunities. • Ensure the service operates in line with relevant policies, controls, regulatory requirements and good customer outcomes. • Actively contribute to the development of the Middle Office operating model and its role within the wider Operations function. • Demonstrate strong ownership, initiative and a continuous focus on improving customer and adviser outcomes. About you We’ve always placed more importance on cultural contribution above technical ability, but we’d really like you to have/be: • Strong operational experience within Financial Services, preferably Pensions, investments or platform administration. • Good understanding of operational processes and how they impact customers and advisers. • Experience of managing complex operational queries, escalations and service issues. • Strong relationship management and influencing skills, with the ability to work effectively across multiple teams. • Strong analytical skills, with the ability to identify trends, root causes and required actions from MI and operational information. • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex operational issues clearly to different audiences. • Strong sense of ownership and accountability for customer and adviser outcomes. • Able to balance immediate service requirements with longer-term service improvement. • Experience of developing people, coaching colleagues or building operational capability. • Able to drive change and improvement whilst managing expectations effectively. • Customer and Adviser focused, with a strong understanding of what excellent service looks like. • Positive and adaptable, with the ability to work effectively in a changing environment. • Positively demonstrate the Nucleus Smart, Heart and Courage values and behaviours. A little about us   We’re the Nucleus Financial Platforms group and we help make retirement more rewarding.   People come first - whether it’s our colleagues, or the advisers and customers we support, we know that working in partnership and collaboration leads to the best outcomes. Together, we’ve shaped the platform to how it is today. We work hard, and we celebrate hard too.   Our ambition is to create a platform with a difference, putting the customer centre stage meant tearing up the rule book and starting from scratch. We’ve come a long way since then, but our mission remains just as focused. That’s why our culture, values, and social responsibility are things we keep at the top of our agenda – because we know they matter and have a big impact.   Our culture is one of the many things that sets us apart from the pack. We want to have an environment where our people feel that they can make a real difference, know they’ll be rewarded for their efforts and more importantly, enjoy themselves at work.   Inclusion and diversity at Nucleus   As with most things in life, who cares, wins. We really care about inclusion.   For us it’s not a tick box exercise; inclusion and diversity are embedded in our culture and everything we do. It’s a commercial imperative. It isn’t about being PC. It’s about being future-relevant and durable. We owe it to ourselves and the industry to ensure we are playing our part in creating a fair, balanced and transparent financial services sector.   More diversity means broader experience, a wider set of perspectives and a better collective ability to problem-solve. And it means being more representative of customer groups, which supports areas such as product development.   At Nucleus, we offer a generous blend of benefits for the things that really matter to our people, including a non-contributory pension, bonus, enhanced parental leave, paid time off for emergencies, health and wellbeing initiatives and flexible working options.