AVP, Complaints Management (Al Ain-Emiratized Role)

Role Overview

AVP, Complaints Management at First Abu Dhabi Bank, located in Al Ain. This is an Emiratized role.

Company Overview

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) is the largest bank in the UAE and one of the world's largest and safest financial institutions. FAB offers a comprehensive range of personal and private banking services, including credit cards, Islamic banking, investments, loans, and mortgages. The organization is committed to excellence and innovation in providing top-tier financial solutions to clients globally.

Role Purpose

The role holder is accountable for managing the end-to-end customer complaints framework at FAB, ensuring effective and timely resolution of customer complaints through direct leadership of complaint handling teams, by leading structured investigations, coordinating with internal stakeholders, and enforcing compliance with internal and regulatory requirements. The role ensures accurate documentation, fair resolution, and proactive identification of recurring issues, while supporting delivery of complaint-related KPIs and customer trust outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Complaint Lifecycle Management

• Manage the complaint lifecycle from investigation to closure, ensuring cases are resolved within agreed SLAs and regulator-mandated timelines.
• Monitor real-time progress of open cases, ensure documentation accuracy, and validate closure entries on the complaints platform.
• Flag overdue complaints, SLA/TAT breaches, and nonresponses from fulfilment units.
• Maintain escalation logs and actively track followups until closure, including regulator-sensitive, high-risk, and repeat complaints.

Investigation and Resolution

• Lead structured investigations to gather facts and align on decisions.
• Coordinate cross-functional engagement to execute resolutions in line with Delegation of Authority.
• Provide inputs for root cause analysis to identify systemic issues and policy/process gaps supporting continuous improvement.
• Ensure customer responses are clear, fair, and empathetic while upholding regulatory and reputational standards.
• Support escalation handling and guide frontline complaint officers in managing complex, sensitive, or regulatory complaints.

Team Leadership and Performance Management

• Lead, coach, and supervise a team of complaint handling officers, ensuring workload distribution, productivity, and timely closures in line with SLAs and regulatory timelines.
• Deliver clear guidance and leadership to the heads of complaint management units.
• Perform performance management of team members, including identification and escalation of underperformance, repeat quality gaps, SLA breaches, or noncompliance.
• Promote knowledge sharing, team coaching, and internal upskilling.
• Define explicit KPIs and performance metrics to ensure effective complaint resolution and service quality.

Quality Assurance

• Overall quality, timeliness, and completeness of complaint resolutions delivered by the team.
• Review daily team outputs and closure quality to ensure accuracy, fairness, and adherence to complaint handling standards.
• Acts as the first level of quality and performance assurance for complaint handling teams, ensuring issues are addressed proactively before escalation.
• Ensure corrective actions are implemented and tracked for issues identified through quality assurance reviews.

Continuous Improvement and Compliance

• Provide inputs to identify improvement themes and trends.
• Continuous identification and prevention of repeat complaints.
• Contribute to internal governance forums and support preparation for internal/external audits or CBUAE reviews.
• Contribute to internal system enhancements by providing structured business requirements, participating in user testing, and validating solutions to ensure operational effectiveness and compliance readiness.
• Operates within complaint handling policies, CPR requirements, and GCX governance frameworks.
• Ongoing audit and control readiness in line with CPR.

Stakeholder Coordination and Governance

• Coordinate cross-functional engagement with internal stakeholders.
• Adherence to DOA and escalation protocol.
• Active support for Head of Complaint Management on key forums and projects.
• Recommend corrective actions, performance escalations, or case escalations based on risk level and DOA thresholds.
• Ensure effective coordination with internal stakeholders and quality of response communication and customer experience.

Qualifications & Experience

• Minimum 3–5 years of experience in complaint management, team leadership, or related compliance roles.

Additional Information

• This is an Emiratized role as part of FAB's structured plans for recruitment and career progression of Emirati talent.