Current opportunities

Want to work with mission-driven people?

Join our team as Operations Manager
Full time, permanent position, Oxford, £25,000 - £30,000

This role lies at the heart of Ethex: providing outstanding services to social-purpose businesses and, ensuring great customer service to the ever-growing number of people who wish to join the Positive Investing Movement and #makemoneydogood.

Acting as an Operations Manager within our small, friendly and exceptionally committed organisation, you will play a critical role in the management and delivery of our Registry and Co-operative Management Services for companies such as Westmill Solar Co-operative; alongside overseeing the successful completion of offers on the Ethex platform.

We are fortunate to work with some great social enterprises, charities and organisations, like Westmill Solar Co-operative – the UK’s first co-operatively run, community owned solar farm with 1500+ members all of which are passionate about renewable energy – and you could be at the centre of that.

About Ethex
Ethex is an award-winning positive investment retail platform that brings together the best positive savings and investment opportunities to make it easy for everyone to #makemoneydogood. We are a leading innovator in the field and this role offers the right candidate an excellent opportunity to be part of an organisation at the cutting edge of making positive investing mainstream.

On our platform, ethex.org.uk, you can browse, compare and invest in a range of products from bank accounts and ISAs to equity investments and charity bonds that offer a social and environmental as well as a financial return. In 2017, we launched a sister platform energiseafrica.com, offering people a chance to invest in pioneering businesses that install life-changing solar systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, accelerating progress towards universal access to affordable clean electricity.

Through our platforms, individuals can invest and save with businesses they believe in – whether it’s renewable energy, fair trade, social housing, organic farming, green transport, or micro-finance schemes – and these positive businesses can then find the investment they need to develop and grow. We want everyone to invest and save in a way that brings benefit to society and finances a more sustainable world. That's what we call positive investing.

Since 2013, multi-award winning Ethex and its sister platform have helped raise over £70 million of investment for 70+ charities, social businesses and community organisations, from over 15,000 positive savers and investors.  

Job Description
To ensure great customer service to positive investors and, to businesses using the platforms to raise finance and build an engaged investor base, there are three key strands to this role:

Business Management Services

• Day-to-date operational management of Westmill Solar Co-operative. This includes activities such as liaising with and reporting to relevant parties (lenders, regulatory bodies, the board), ensuring all contracts and insurances are up-to-date, overseeing the book-keeping and accounts, secretarial support to the board, member communications, and being the day-to-day contact for the Co-operative.
• Providing operational business management support to our sister platform, energiseafrica.com, such as ensuring all contracts and insurances are up-to-date, and keeping our corporate governance information up-to-date
• Providing operational business management support to Ethex itself

Offer Handling and Aftercare

• Supporting businesses with good investor aftercare services through our Registrar Service including robust data management, AGM communications, oversight of all interest and capital repayments to members
• Onboarding new businesses to our Registrar Service and maintaining ongoing good relationships with the businesses using our Registrar Services through pro-active relationship management – anticipating their needs and being ready to address them before they come to us.
• Managing the relationship with the company providing the white-label technology solution to run our registrar service
• Supporting Business Development with due diligence on offers in the pipeline
• Managing share and bond offers from go live to successful completion, including appropriate reconciliation of investor data and funds, to ensure all investors kick-start their relationship with the business on a positive footing.
• Analysing and optimising order and offer management systems and contributing thinking to business requirement specifications for new development

Investor Relationship Management

• Managing customers’ orders from placement to completion
• Overseeing and managing investor aftercare services via our Registrar Service
• Good customer engagement through strong order management systems
• Liaising with customers and answering helpdesk enquiries via phone and email.
• Creating 100% customer satisfaction and building loyalty to the Ethex business.

 About you

• Highly organised and extremely detail oriented, possibly from a project management or business management background.
• High levels of integrity and discretion in handling confidential information, and professionalism for dealing with investors and businesses
• An excellent communicator both verbal and written with the ability to manage problems and complaints.
• Numerical literate with a good attention to detail to support the handling of large volumes of financial transactions and data
• Good customer understanding that you use to promote excellent customer service to maximise business performance and to build effective relationships inside and outside of Ethex.
• Ability to develop and optimise processes.
• Excellent ICT skills, specifically high-level proficiency in Excel.
• Self-motivated with a can-do attitude, who can work independently, but who knows when to be a team player.
• Demonstrated ability to respond effectively to changing workloads and priorities.
• A motivation to make money do good.

Desirable to this role but not essential if the above qualities can be demonstrated:

• A strong background or track-record in project management
• An understanding of finance and investment
• Experience of working in a regulated entity or within a regulated financial institution or within a regulatory framework
• Experience or understanding of community-energy/ co-operative business model

What we offer

• A fantastic opportunity to help grow a multi award-winning social enterprise!
• An opportunity to work with mission driven, happy people.
• Opportunities to visit some of the social businesses we are supporting to see positive impact on the ground.
• Flexible working hours are available if it works for you and us.
• 25 days holiday a year plus some extra days around Christmas when we close to have a rest.
• Statutory pension scheme
• Plenty of bike racks to stash your bike

Contractual Details
This is a permanent contract with a 3 month probationary period at the start. Please note you must be eligible to work in the UK in order to apply for this role.

Practicalities
This position will be based in the Ethex office at Oxford. The office is accessed via a small staircase.

Please apply with CV and a covering letter explaining why you are interested in the job and what you would bring to the role by email to help@ethex.org.uk. CV’s should ideally be no more than 2 pages.

Deadline: midday on Wednesday 19th June.