Head of Reward

Titan Wealth is a fast-growing wealth management business, both in the UK and internationally.  It has evolved a fairer, more efficient and effective business model, structured to deliver leading advice-led wealth management services, giving financial advisers and their clients the best opportunity to fulfil their dreams and ambitions.

We provide a dynamic work environment full of opportunity, one where both individual and team initiative and contribution is encouraged, so that together we can deliver better outcomes for our clients over the long term.

Titan Wealth is a PE-backed wealth management group that has grown rapidly through acquisition. The business operates across multiple entities with different inherited reward structures, compensation frameworks, and benefits arrangements – many of which have never been formally reviewed or benchmarked against the market.

 

The Head of Reward is brought in to change that. This is a build-and-fix role: the postholder will conduct an end-to-end review of how Titan rewards its people across the group, design and implement a consistent, competitive, and commercially-driven reward framework, and ensure that compensation – particularly for revenue-generating populations such as financial advisers and sales roles – is structured to drive the right behaviours and outcomes.

 

Working closely with the Group HR Director, Finance, and business leadership, the Head of Reward will move Titan from a fragmented, acquisition-inherited reward landscape to a coherent, market-relevant, and PE-diligence-ready reward architecture. This role requires a practitioner who is equally comfortable designing an adviser commission structure with the Finance Director and communicating a benefits change to an employee population of 1,000+.

 

• The role is a build role: the postholder will be shaping a reward function that does not yet exist in its mature form. This requires comfort with ambiguity, the ability to prioritise ruthlessly, and the confidence to make recommendations to senior stakeholders before every data point is available.
• Given the pace of acquisition activity, reward priorities may shift at short notice. The postholder is expected to flex between strategic design work and urgent transactional support as deal flow demands.

 

Reward Strategy and Architecture

• Develop and own a Group Reward Strategy – a clear, documented statement of how Titan positions pay and benefits in the market, what reward is designed to achieve, and how it connects to Titan’s commercial objectives and culture
• Define Titan’s total compensation philosophy: market, the balance between fixed and variable pay, and the principles governing how reward decisions are made
• Build a consistent job levelling and grading framework across all acquired entities, enabling like-for-like pay comparison, transparent career progression, and defensible pay decisions – replacing the current patchwork of entity-specific grades
• Ensure the reward architecture is documented, explainable, and free of off-system or informal pay arrangements that could not be defended under scrutiny

 

Adviser and Sales Compensation

• Conduct a full audit of existing adviser and sales compensation structures across all acquired entities: salary, draw arrangements, commission rates, override structures, trail income, retention payments, and earn-out provisions
• Work with Finance, Division SLT and Group HR Director to design a harmonised adviser compensation framework that is commercially competitive, drives adviser productivity and retention, and is operationally consistent across the group
• Model the financial impact of compensation structure changes with clear cost, risk, and retention implications before any changes are implemented
• Ensure adviser compensation structures comply with FCA remuneration rules, SM&CR requirements, and any applicable MiFID II considerations, working with Compliance where required
• Manage the transition of acquired advisers onto harmonised compensation arrangements: change management, individual communications, consultation where required, and timeline that balances commercial urgency with employment law obligations
• Act as the reward expert for ongoing adviser and sales hiring: advising TA and BPs on competitive offer structuring, sign-on arrangements, book transfer compensation, and retention package design

 

Annual Reward Cycle

• Own and run the annual pay review process end-to-end: budget setting with Finance, manager guidance, salary recommendation tooling, approval workflow in HiBob, and communication to employees and managers
• Own and run the annual bonus cycle: scheme documentation, performance linkage, Finance reconciliation, approval process, payment administration, and communications
• Supported by the Comps and Benefits specialist Produce salary benchmarking data annually using a recognised external survey informing pay ranges, identifying outliers, and providing a defensible evidence base for pay decisions
• Supported by the Comps and Benefits specialist, Conduct an annual pay equity analysis (gender and ethnicity where data is available) – presenting findings and recommended remediation to the Group HR Director and Rem\co
• Manage discretionary pay governance: spot bonuses, retention payments, sign-ons, and buyouts – ensuring all decisions are documented, approved at the right level, and recorded in HiBob

 

Benefits Review and Harmonisation

• Conduct an end-to-end review of the Group’s current benefits provision across all entities: pension, private medical, life assurance, income protection, flexible benefits , holiday, and any entity-specific legacy schemes
• Benchmark current benefits against the wealth management market – identifying where Titan is competitive, where it lags, and where cost can be reduced without impacting employee experience
• Supported by the Comps and Benefits specialist and in consultation with the Head of People integrations, develop and execute a benefits harmonisation plan – moving all acquired employee populations onto a consistent Titan benefits suite at the right pace, managing dual-running costs, and ensuring clear employee communication throughout
• Own the annual benefits renewal process: managing relationships with brokers and insurers, reviewing market alternatives, challenging renewal pricing, and making recommendations to the Group HR Director
• Optimise the flexible benefits platform, improving employee engagement with the platform, reviewing the menu of choices, and ensuring it supports the broader reward narrative

 

Commercial Partnering with Finance and Business Leadership

• Work as a genuine commercial partner to Finance: providing reward cost modelling, headcount cost analysis, and people cost forecasts
• Support the Head of People Integrations and deal teams with reward due diligence and harmonisation planning for each acquisition – providing a rapid assessment of inherited compensation structures, liability exposure, and integration cost
• Advise business leaders and managers on reward decisions in a commercially grounded way: not just “what is policy” but “what is the right answer commercially and what are the risks”
• Build and maintain a live reward cost model across the group – enabling Finance and the Group HR Director to understand people cost at any point, segment it by entity, function, and level, and model the impact of changes

 

Process Optimisation and Systems

• Review and optimise current reward processes end-to-end – identifying manual steps, inconsistencies, and bottlenecks that create risk or waste, and redesigning them to be efficient, scalable, and audit-ready
• Work with Head of Group HR Operations to ensure HiBob is properly configured to support the reward function: pay ranges, salary review workflows, bonus scheme records, benefits administration, and total compensation reporting
• Work with the Group Head of HR systems to ensure reward data in HiBob is accurate, complete, and used as the single source of truth for all compensation decisions
• Build standard reward templates and toolkits for use by the business: offer approval forms, salary review guidance for managers, bonus scheme summaries, total reward statements, and new joiner benefits guides

 

Team and Stakeholder Management

• Line manage and develop the Compensation & Benefits Specialist setting clear objectives, providing regular feedback, and growing her capability in line with the function’s ambitions
• Ensure Compensation & Benefits Specialist has clear ownership of BAU benefits and compensation administration, freeing the Head of Reward to focus on the strategic and project workload
• Brief and upskill the HR Business Partner team on reward topics – enabling BPs to have informed reward conversations with managers without needing to escalate every question
• Work with the L&D to ensure the reward philosophy and performance management framework are fully aligned – reward should reinforce the behaviours and outcomes that L&D is building capability around, and performance ratings should feed meaningfully into pay decisions
• Build productive working relationships with Finance, Compliance, and division SLT positioned as the reward expert who helps the business make better decisions.
• Work closely with the Head of People Integration to ensure that every incoming acquisition – UK and international – is assessed against the Group reward strategy from the outset: understanding inherited compensation and benefits structures, identifying gaps and misalignments, and building a clear harmonisation plan that is sequenced into the overall integration timeline
• Ensure the HR Business Partner team understands and can articulate the reward framework: BPs should be equipped to explain pay ranges, bonus scheme mechanics, and benefits to managers and employees as part of their day-to-day people partnering – escalating only genuinely complex or exception cases to the Reward function

 

Payroll, Systems and Total Reward Delivery

• Work closely with the Compensation & Benefits Specialist to ensure the total reward offering is operationally accurate and consistently delivered
• Own the configuration and optimisation of HiBob’s compensation module: pay bands, salary review workflows, bonus scheme records, and total compensation reporting – ensuring reward processes are automated wherever possible and that manual, spreadsheet-based workarounds are eliminated
• Champion fair and transparent pay across the group – ensuring employees and managers have access to clear information about how pay decisions are made, what the pay framework looks like at their level, and what they need to do to progress
• Produce total reward statements for the employee population, enabling individuals to see the full value of their package beyond base salary: pension, benefits, bonus, and any other elements of their total compensation

 

International Reward and Acquisition Alignment

• Engage with international acquired businesses to understand their current reward practices, compensation structures, and benefits arrangements – building a clear picture of where they sit relative to the Group reward strategy
• Develop jurisdiction-appropriate reward recommendations for each international entity: where full harmonisation to the Titan standard is appropriate, where local market practice or employment law requires a different approach, and what the timeline and cost of transition looks like
• Ensure that jurisdictional differences (tax treatment of benefits, mandatory social contributions, local statutory minimums, notice and severance norms) are factored into reward decisions for international populations – working with local employment counsel where required
• Act as the reward lead for international expansion: as Titan enters new markets through acquisition, provide a rapid reward assessment and integration plan that the Head of People Integration can build into the overall people integration timeline
• Report on international reward alignment progress to the Group HR Director, identifying risks where acquired populations remain on materially different compensation terms and where this creates retention, equity, or compliance exposure

Essential

• Proven experience designing and managing adviser or sales commission structures in a wealth management, financial advice, or asset management environment – understands draw arrangements, trail income, override structures, and the commercial dynamics of adviser compensation
• End-to-end reward generalist experience: has personally run an annual pay review, designed or materially changed a bonus scheme, conducted salary benchmarking, and managed benefits harmonisation
• Strong commercial and analytical capability: comfortable building compensation cost models in Excel, presenting scenarios to Finance and senior leadership, and making data-driven recommendations
• Experience working in an acquisitive or multi-entity environment where reward harmonisation has been a live project – not just theoretical knowledge of harmonisation
• Working knowledge of FCA remuneration rules and the intersection of SM&CR with compensation decisions in regulated financial services firms
• Confident stakeholder manager: able to work alongside Finance Directors, business MDs, and PE stakeholders, and credibly challenge decisions where the reward implications have been underweighted
• Experienced people manager: has managed at least one direct report in a reward or C&B function
• High attention to detail and strong governance instincts: pay decisions affect people’s lives and must be right, documented, and defensible

 

Desirable

• Experience in a PE-backed business with an exit horizon – understands what reward architecture needs to look like to withstand diligence
• Familiarity with recognised salary benchmarking surveys (Willis Towers Watson, Mercer, McLagan)
• Experience with HiBob or a comparable HRIS for reward administration
• Knowledge of flexible benefits platforms (experience with Cloud8 or similar)
• CIPD qualified (Level 7 or equivalent) or reward-specific qualification (e.g. WorldatWork CCP)

Essential

• Degree-level education or equivalent professional experience
• Substantial reward and compensation experience at a senior level in financial services

 

Desirable

• CIPD Level 7 or equivalent
WorldatWork Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) or equivalent reward qualification

Creativity – we recognise we need new ways of thinking, learning and doing to both improve our own productivity and efficiency as well as to help us stay ahead of competitors.

Commitment – we are team with the willingness to put time, effort and energy into driving change in the organisation, going the extra mile.

Collaboration – we need teamwork amongst ourselves and with partners to generate more innovative, efficient and effective solutions and thereby a greater sense of achievement.

The Titan Wealth Group is firmly committed to fostering an inclusive and equitable environment for everyone who works with us, regardless of their race, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, physical ability or disability, or political affiliation. We believe that having a diverse team allows us to create the best possible outcomes for our clients and team members. We strive to provide equal opportunities in all aspects of the workplace with respect to recruitment and career advancement, pay and benefits, training and development opportunities and other job-related activities.