Regulatory & Compliance Lead - Travel/General Insurance (France, Spain, Italy)

Role: Regulatory & Compliance Lead - Travel/General Insurance (France, Spain, Italy)

Contract: 6 - 12 months

Location: UK-based (with strong European regulatory knowledge)

Key Essential Skills:

• 10+ years of regulatory, compliance, or risk leadership experience in the Travel or General Insurance sectors.
• Proven experience setting up or scaling operations in France, Spain, and Italy, ideally in greenfield or fast growth environments.
• In-depth knowledge of regional insurance regulatory requirements, licensing processes, and supervisory frameworks.
• Strong understanding of Pan-European regulations such as IDD, GDPR, and Solvency II.
• Skilled in stakeholder management, with high-impact communication capabilities
• Hands-on experience setting up new insurance products or services, across multiple European markets
• Experience engaging with national regulatory authorities and navigating complex compliance challenges

Desirable:

• Fluency or strong working knowledge of French, Spanish, or Italian
• Background in legal, compliance, or risk (eg Law degree or Master's in Compliance/Risk)
• Experience with digital or Embedded insurance business models
• Familiarity with compliance risks in digital distribution and insurtech ecosystems
• Strong cultural and regulatory intelligence across EU jurisdictions

Overview:

An exciting opportunity to join a high-impact regulatory transformation program for a top-tier UK insurer expanding into European markets. This client-facing contract role is pivotal in securing and delivering a strategic greenfield insurance initiative across France, Spain, and Italy.

You will lead regulatory setup, licensing, and compliance structuring from the ground up, establishing robust governance and regulatory credibility while enabling commercial agility.

This is a unique chance to shape the compliance strategy of a transformative insurance operation, gaining visibility across executive stakeholders and helping launch market-ready operations with confidence.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Define and lead end-to-end regulatory and compliance strategy for EU insurance operations
• Direct engagement with local regulators to obtain licenses and ensure regulatory readiness
• Design and embed governance, risk, and compliance frameworks tailored to each jurisdiction
• Provide subject matter expertise on EU regulations including IDD, GDPR, and Solvency II
• Partner with internal Legal, Risk, Ops, and Commercial teams to ensure regulatory alignment
• Serve as primary compliance point of contact for regulators and internal leadership
• Monitor and interpret evolving regulatory requirements across multiple European markets
• Build or oversee local compliance teams and/or external advisory relationships
• Influence bid/winning strategies with compliance credibility and execution plan

Outline Thebes Group:

Thebes Group is a leading UK wide IT infrastructure technology consultancy. We are well-known for our extensive talent pool of highly competent IT professionals and exclusive Academy programmes, which provide a great opportunity to undertake technical training in core disciplines. Thebes work with a number of leading vendors, Government, financial institutions and insurance companies including investment banks, brokers and hedge funds. To see our list of core capabilities please click here.

Thebes does IT solutions & services differently from most other IT service providers. As an Assured Outcome Provider (AOP) we have spent fifteen years willingly sharing the client's risk with them by focusing on outputs (ie quality service & solutions and ROI) rather than inputs (ie pricelists and headcount). We do this by fitting our skills, solutions & capabilities to needs, augmenting our staff with enthusiastic professionals from our Academy programme and remaining flexible as our clients' needs change.