Bank Non-Executive Director — Operational Resilience and Service Continuity

The service-level perspective

Examine how management identifies important services, maps dependencies and defines tolerable disruption. Challenge assumptions about people, data, facilities and external providers that could fail together. Review whether testing reflects difficult but plausible conditions and whether findings lead to funded remediation rather than repeated acceptance.

Evidence that recovery will work

The director should challenge recovery claims that rely on untested manual workarounds or capacity that has not been demonstrated. Oversight must include the readiness of decision-makers and communications, not only technical restoration plans.

Candidates need senior experience in regulated banking operations, technology risk, operational risk or comparable service-critical leadership. They should understand banking customer journeys and the consequences of failures across internal and external boundaries. Evidence of overseeing exercises, incidents or major remediation is valuable.

Trade-offs before disruption

Assess the board's visibility of resilience trade-offs in cost reduction, outsourcing and transformation proposals. Ask how customers would be protected during prolonged disruption and how decisions would be made when normal information is unavailable. Ensure incident lessons are connected to investment priorities and accountability.

Governance contribution and limits

This appointment combines banking governance with practical understanding of operational dependencies. It is a board role, not an incident-command or technology-management position. The director must be able to question technical evidence and request specialist assurance where necessary.

Applicants must be able to translate complex dependencies into board decisions and distinguish assurance from optimistic reporting. A strong candidate can challenge constructively without trying to operate the service from board discussion.

Success is a board that understands its most consequential service vulnerabilities, the basis for tolerance decisions and the credibility of improvement plans. The director will follow material actions and contribute to wider governance responsibilities. Appointment eligibility, independence and conflicts will be assessed individually. Management retains responsibility for continuity planning and incident execution; the director's task is to ensure those responsibilities are properly defined, resourced and scrutinised before disruption exposes their weaknesses.