Group Chief Risk Officer — Investment Mandate and Exception Governance

The mandate

Two investment-management entities under a common holding platform use different approaches to mandate limits and risk exceptions. Their local controls operate, but the group cannot readily determine whether similar exposures receive consistent challenge or whether an accepted temporary exception has become normal practice. The Group CRO will establish independent enterprise risk ownership across this bounded two-manager perimeter.

The first eighteen months will connect investment mandates, limit definitions and exception evidence into a usable group framework. Permanent employment remains open-ended, with continuing responsibility for board risk communication and practitioner development. Local investment risk teams retain fund-specific knowledge, while the group function sets challenge standards that respect differences between products rather than force every investment mandate into the same numeric template.

The important judgement is what a limit or exception actually permits. A market movement can create a passive breach without a new investment decision; an active trade can change exposure through an instrument whose treatment is not adequately defined. Both need an accountable response, but they are not identical events. The CRO will require evidence of cause, consequence and authorised remedy, avoiding retrospective approval that simply erases an uncomfortable control record.

Within the approved risk delegation, this executive leads risk staff, sets review standards and escalates unacceptable or unsupported exceptions directly to the Board Risk Committee. Portfolio managers own investment selection, authorised committees approve material risk appetite and designated compliance officers retain statutory responsibilities. The role does not provide a universal assurance of investment returns, prescribe securities to buy or independently interpret every jurisdiction's legal investment restrictions.

The first-year board picture should distinguish current exposures, authorised temporary departures and unresolved mandate interpretation issues, each with an identifiable decision owner. By eighteen months, repeat exceptions should trigger a substantive review of their cause and the appropriateness of existing limits. The continuing CRO function maintains that discipline through new products and market conditions, ensuring independent risk challenge survives commercial pressure and leadership changes.

What you will own

• Establish a mandate-to-limit register that traces material controls to approved product conditions, identifying ambiguous instrument or exposure definitions before operations apply inconsistent treatment across the two managers.
• Decide the independent review standard for active, passive and data-related breaches, requiring evidence of cause and financial consequence rather than treating every limit event as an equivalent compliance entry.
• Govern risk-exception escalation through authorised rationale, duration and remedy, preserving rejected and expired decisions so an apparent resolution cannot conceal an unaddressed exposure or retrospective approval.
• Build a group risk view that compares substantive mandate exposures across products, making genuine differences explicit while challenging inconsistent judgement where the underlying risk question is materially similar.
• Lead recurring-exception reviews with investment and operating owners, testing whether a repeated departure reflects a control defect, unsuitable limit or conscious appetite choice requiring board reconsideration.
• Present independent board and trustee risk challenge with clear evidence limitations, separating risk recommendations from portfolio decisions and maintaining direct escalation where commercial management cannot accept the exposure itself.
• Develop entity risk leaders through calibrated mandate cases, strengthening their ability to defend a reasoned challenge and sustain the approved exception governance when senior investment stakeholders disagree.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate CRO or equivalent independent risk leadership in asset management, investment platforms or closely comparable regulated financial services. Explain a mandate or limit issue you personally escalated, the exposure evidence inspected and the authorised decision reached. The relevant record must show independent judgement and executive risk accountability rather than a compliance summary prepared for a board meeting by another owner.
• Bring applied understanding of investment mandates, trading controls and exception governance across several product types. Relevant examples should distinguish active decisions, passive market movements and source-data problems without allowing classification to excuse an unresolved risk. Describe an ambiguous instrument or limit treatment, how you obtained the appropriate specialist view and how the accepted decision became operable in subsequent control reviews.
• Show enterprise risk and control-assessment discipline, including recurrence analysis, accountable remedies and credible reporting from operating systems. Familiarity with investment order-management risk technology is useful when supported by judgement about its limitations. Provide an example where a system flag or apparent absence of a breach did not establish the true mandate position, and explain your independent investigation and documented conclusion.
• Establish leadership credibility with investment executives, compliance officers, trustees and board members. This Group CRO must develop capable risk leaders and maintain constructive independence under performance pressure. Describe a challenged exception you refused to normalise, the board or delegated decision route used and the subsequent review that tested whether the accepted remedy genuinely changed the exposure rather than merely closed the reporting item.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 9 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-074.