Manager, Travel Claims Vendor Risk & Oversight

Travel Claims is changing the way it works. Over the next nine months, the way a travel claim is received, routed, reviewed and audited is being redesigned and part-automated through our delivery partner. At the same time, the volume of secondary reviews coming into the team has roughly doubled inside a year. We are looking for a manager who can run a team of experienced claims professionals through that change and come out the other side with a faster process, better decisions and a team working in a genuinely different way.

This role leads the Travel Claims Risk Management Team, the group that handles our highest-value, most sensitive and most complex claim decisions. Much of the claim handling behind those decisions sits with a third-party administrator, so a central part of the job is second-line oversight of that vendor: setting the control expectations, testing whether they are being met, and escalating when they are not. The role is also the business owner for the Travel Claims part of the transformation programme and the person who owns what the team's numbers say.

Position Responsibilities:

• Claim decisions and medical case management: Lead the review of high-value and complex travel claims, working within the approval authorities set for the business, and make or endorse the decision on files that carry financial, regulatory or reputational weight. Set the standard for the written reasoning behind a decision, particularly where a review changes an earlier outcome. Manage the flow of work so the oldest and highest-value files are the ones being worked and keep the team's open inventory visible and current. Act as the escalation point for claimant complaints, legal and media threats and regulator enquiries that reach the team.
• Audit, quality and recoveries: Partner with the Audit and Operations team on the monthly audit programme covering both Affinity and Group Benefits travel business. Turn audit findings into process change rather than only file correction, feeding themes into training, into the administrator's handling standards and into the automation backlog. Own the connection between what audit identifies and what is actually recovered and establish the recovery baseline the business does not have today. Contribute to annual audit cycles including licensing, case fee and recovery reviews.
• Data, reporting and insight: Run the team on evidence. Build and maintain a live view of intake, time waiting before assignment, active review time, open work by age and value, overturn rates and audit findings, refreshed automatically rather than assembled by hand each month. Make sure every figure the team publishes can be traced back to a source that somebody else can open and check and bring that analysis to monthly operating reviews and executive discussions.
• Transformation, AI and automation: Act as the business owner for the Travel Claims scope in the transformation programme. Write and prioritise the backlog, define what ready and done mean for this team's process, take part in programme planning, run the fortnightly demonstrations, and sign off testing, go-live and the settling-in period. Lead the assessment of tools that remove manual effort from a file, including medical record summarisation. Agree with our administrator where automation can handle low-value, low-risk claims and secondary reviews end to end, and what level of error is acceptable when it does.
• Vendor risk oversight and governance: Own the risk and control oversight of the third-party administrator that handles travel claims on our behalf. Set and document the control expectations that apply to their handling of our files, including approval authorities and the escalation rules that sit around them, and test whether those controls are actually working rather than assuming they are. Run the governance rhythm: weekly and monthly operational forums, the quarterly and mid-year scorecards, and the annual reviews covering licensing, case fees and recoveries. Bring evidence rather than impressions to each of them.
• People leadership: Lead, coach and develop a team of eight through a period in which several of their roles will change. Be straight with people about what automation changes and what it does not and move reviewers into higher-value work as routine work is taken out. Build the team's confidence with data and with AI tools, set clear performance expectations, and grow the bench beneath this role.

Required Qualifications:

• Post-secondary education in a business, health, analytics or insurance discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Five or more years leading a claims, risk or audit team, including leading people through a significant change to how the work is done.
• Strong technical grounding in travel or health claims and medical case management, with sound judgement on high-value and complex decisions.