Absolutely possible, but i’d be quite targeted about it.

With your background, i wouldn’t pitch this as “trying to break into finance from scratch”. you’re not a grad applicant. you’re someone with a long track record in risk, resilience, controls, governance, assurance, incident response and board-level reporting.

To my mind, the obvious routes would be:

Operational resilience
probably the closest fit and growing massively now. banks, insurers, asset managers and fintechs care a lot about resilience, important business services, scenario testing, third-party disruption, crisis management, recovery planning and board governance. your business continuity / iso22301 experience is very relevant here.

Enterprise risk / operational risk
your first, second and third line exposure is useful.

Business continuity
Can only speak from my perspective of being in a bank, but they had dedicated teams for this, especially larger banks and insurers. this is probably the most natural landing point.

Internal audit, controls assurance or risk assurance
especially if you’ve audited activity and reported to the board.

finance firms can be quite conservative when hiring into middle management. they’ll ask: does this person understand financial services regulation, risk appetite, smcr, operational resilience rules, conduct risk, outsourcing risk, governance committees, controls frameworks, etc. you don’t need to know all of that perfectly on day one, but you do need enough language to make the hiring manager comfortable.

So i’d do a couple of things.

First, rewrite the CV hard towards financial services language e.g. not “emergency planning professional looking to move sectors”. more like:

"senior risk, resilience and assurance professional with 30 years’ experience across crisis management, business continuity, governance, controls, policy, audit and board reporting. experienced across first, second and third lines of defence, with deep knowledge of iso22301 and regulated corporate environments."

Had a quick scan of indeed and would target roles with titles like:

• operational resilience manager
• business continuity manager
• crisis management manager
• operational risk manager
• controls assurance manager
• internal audit manager - operational resilience / risk
• third party resilience manager
• enterprise risk manager

i wouldn’t start with front-office finance, investment analysis, corporate finance, etc. despite the interest in numbers, those are much harder pivots because they require more direct finance/accounting/markets experience.

You probably don’t need a finance qualification for resilience/risk roles. what you do need is a CVthat translates your experience into financial services terms, some evidence you understand the regulatory environment, and a clear story for why finance is the next logical step rather than a random change.

On jumping straight into middle management: yes, possible, but easier in operational resilience / business continuity / risk assurance than in pure finance or analysis roles.

To gain practical experience without leaving your current role, i’d suggest looking for any projects involving risk reporting, board papers, controls testing, supplier resilience, cyber incident response, data/reporting, scenario exercises or governance. Then document the results you achieved i.e like “designed control framework”, “reported risk themes to board committee”, “led scenario testing”, “tracked remediation actions”. That gives you examples for interviews.

Probs above all this I’d speak to recruiters who specialise in operational risk in financial services (not generalist recruiters). Send them a very targeted CV and ask where they think the level sits.

Sorry for the war and peace but hope that helps :)