About · Partner profile
Benn Pople is a co-founder and managing director of RiskTAE. He has recruited risk professionals and nothing else since 2003, and leads the firm’s senior risk searches: chief risk officers and heads of risk, interim and fractional CRO cover, and risk committee chairs.
More than two decades on, he still runs the hardest searches himself.
Experience
In many recruitment firms risk is one desk among several; for Benn it has been the whole career. His searches cover credit, market, prudential and operational risk, quantitative and qualitative, up to chief risk officer and non-executive director.
Clients have included fintech start-ups and multinational banks, and he works as readily alongside an in-house talent acquisition team as with a global recruitment process outsourcing provider.
Market view
The market for risk people. Boards, chief executives and HR teams ask him what a role will cost, who could fill it and how long it will take; candidates ask what they are worth and where the openings are. He answers from the searches the firm is running and the conversations behind them.
His advice covers salaries and packages for risk roles at every level up to chief risk officer, who is moving between firms and why, where demand is rising and where it is falling, and the trends changing how risk teams are built, from Basel 3.1 and the strong and simple regime to the growth of specialist lenders and fintechs. Journalists can reach our partners through the page for journalists.
Perspective
All of them since 2003. Each one changed what banks needed from their risk teams, and the searches changed with it.
| Change | When | What firms needed |
|---|---|---|
| Basel II | Framework published June 2004; in force in the UK from 2007 | Credit risk modellers and validators for the internal ratings based approach, and operational risk functions built from scratch once operational risk carried a capital charge. |
| The financial crisis | 2007 to 2009 | Liquidity risk leaders, stress testing teams and chief risk officers with the standing to challenge a board. |
| Basel III | Published December 2010 | Capital and liquidity specialists for the new ratios, the liquidity coverage ratio and the net stable funding ratio among them. |
| The Senior Managers Regime | Banks from 7 March 2016 | Chief risk officers approved as senior managers (SMF4) and personally accountable, so every CRO appointment became a regulatory approval as well as a hire. |
| Basel 3.1 and the SDDT regime | 1 January 2027 | Prudential and capital leads who can re-weight a balance sheet under the new standardised approaches and the output floor, and, for smaller firms, run the simpler regime. |
A CV reads differently when you watched those changes land. Benn knows which experience was hard won and which was a change of title.
Assessment
He assesses candidates on the work they have done rather than the titles they have held. A CV that says a candidate owned the ICAAP leaves the real questions open: did they write it or only review it, and what did the board challenge? Benn asks them because he knows what the work involves and where it usually goes wrong.
Each specialism has its own tells. For a head of model risk, the last validation they carried out rather than signed. For a head of credit risk, the decisions they took at credit committee. For a head of liquidity risk, the deposit outflow assumptions they set and defended. For a chief risk officer, the last time they told the board a limit had been breached, and what happened next.
The search team also has the firm’s own practitioners to call on. Where a role turns on technical work, the people who write ICAAPs and build capital models for Risk Advisory can test the shortlist too, so a client meets candidates who have already been examined by people who have done the job.
At RiskTAE
Benn leads Risk Talent, the firm’s executive search and talent acquisition practice, and runs its senior searches himself: chief risk officers, interim and fractional CRO cover, heads of risk and risk committee chairs and NEDs. He also works alongside in-house talent acquisition teams on the roles they cannot fill through their own channels.
He leads the firm’s client relationships and operations across all four practices and sees each engagement delivered to its agreed scope and timetable.
More than 20 years of recruiting risk professionals is also how he built the firm’s bench. He selects and looks after the consultants and trainers who deliver Risk Advisory and Risk Education, former CROs and regulators, interim executives and model specialists among them, and puts the right people on each engagement. Mark Dougherty, CPA (CAN), leads the technical work; Benn makes sure it lands with the client as agreed.
Senior risk professionals thinking about a move can talk to the team in confidence through the candidates page.
Insights
A head of non-financial risk leads the second-line oversight of a bank's risks that do not arise from lending, trading or funding: operational risk, operational resilience, third-party and outsourcing risk, technology and cyber risk, and in some banks conduct and model risk. The role challenges the first line and reports on these risks to the CRO and the board.
By Benn Pople · 6 min read
A chief risk officer job description for a UK bank has to do two jobs: describe the role to candidates and match the statement of responsibilities that goes to the PRA with the SMF4 application. This template sets out both, with the Risk Control Part requirements and the prescribed responsibilities to consider for a CRO.
By Benn Pople · 7 min read
An interim chief risk officer covers the role full time for a fixed period, usually while the permanent CRO is found; a fractional chief risk officer holds the role part time on a continuing basis. Either way the person performs the Chief Risk function, SMF4, and needs PRA approval unless the 12-week rule for short cover by an employee applies.
By Benn Pople · 9 min read
A UK bank hiring a senior manager, a certification function holder or a notified non-executive director must request regulatory references covering the candidate’s previous six years from every relevant former employer, and must normally hold them...
By Benn Pople · 8 min read
The legal limit is three months from the day the regulator receives a complete application. In practice the PRA is much faster: its median time to decide senior manager applications was 28 days between December 2025...
By Benn Pople · 7 min read
A chief risk officer runs a bank’s independent risk management function. In the UK the role is a regulated senior management function, SMF4, defined as “responsibility for overall management of the risk controls of a firm,...
By Benn Pople · 7 min read
In a UK bank the chair of the risk committee performs a senior management function of their own, SMF10, and needs PRA approval before taking up the role. The PRA requires a risk committee, and so...
By Benn Pople · 7 min read
When a chief risk officer resigns, a UK bank can put someone into the Chief Risk function (SMF4) without regulatory approval for less than 12 weeks in any consecutive 12-month period, provided the absence was temporary...
By Benn Pople · 7 min readNext step
A 30-minute call is enough to agree the brief and whether we are the right firm to run the search.
Tell us about the role and a partner will come back to you. Treated in confidence.
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