Interim Senior Vice President, Assurance — Integration

Assurance that tells the committee what to fix first

An audit committee can be handed fifty open findings and still not know what matters. Findings arrive from internal audit, external auditors, regulators, clinical governance and the parent group's own reviews, each written in its own language and graded on its own scale. Treated separately, they produce a long list and very little change. Treated as one agenda, sequenced by consequence and by dependency, they become something a committee can govern. The Interim Senior Vice President, Assurance exists to build and run that agenda, reporting to the Audit Committee Chair with executive authority for 24 months.

The authority runs deeper than prioritisation. You will decide how assurance decisions are taken and where a country head's own sign-off stops. You will set the standard of proof for money, staff and control requests across countries, and rule on which remediation commitments proceed, pause or close, and in what order. A risk or compliance plan that leaves a unit holding exposure it never accepted will be stopped, and investment cases that skip adoption, dependencies or the downside will be declined. You approve who leads assurance work and how concerns rise, and you resolve disputes between the Audit Committee Chair and the heads of operations before money or staff are moved.

As part of a multinational group, the organisation also answers to group standards. Good assurance work here reconciles the two lines of accountability rather than satisfying one at the expense of the other, and it does so without letting clinical services feel the strain of a remediation programme. Remediation that is declared closed but never tested is the most common failure in this field; every closure you report should have been tested by someone other than the person who did the fixing.

You have led a scale-up, a platform pivot and a joint venture while keeping what the board was told tied to what operations could show. The businesses where you did so had $730 million or more in revenue, at least 5,000 people, and operations in eight or more countries. The seat requires risk judgement at level 4, with assurance testing, regulatory engagement and risk appetite each at level 3. You have laid a contested downside to an audit committee chair at full strength, and you stay accountable once the decision is made, down to the slow work of closing every exception.

The agenda across two years

When ninety days have passed, the assurance and remediation agenda should be sequenced with the Audit Committee Chair, and every open finding should have a person responsible for closing it. Around month nine the highest-priority remediation items should be closed and tested, and assurance coverage should run across the combined operations rather than unit by unit. By month 24 a single assurance standard should be operating across the integrated business, with remediation closure evidenced to the audit committee rather than asserted.

Fit, and the stages

Anyone who must have each country head's agreement before halting a commitment, or who wants a voice without carrying the result for 24 months, will be frustrated here. For everyone else, the Audit Committee Chair opens the process during week one, privately and by video. The Regional President then works through a problem with you in week three. In week five you meet, face to face, executives who each lead a different function; week seven brings the process to a close with the full board. Our assessment of each stage will be with you in writing within five working days.