Director of Strategy

General Accountability:

The overall mandate of the Strategy group is to deliver comprehensive, forward-looking advisory services to senior management in a timely manner, execute on divisional strategic planning deliverables for the Executive Leadership Team and Board of Directors audiences, Identify opportunities for growth and efficiency, and present them cohesively to the management team.
Maintain an effective monitoring framework and process that will help ensure we successfully execute on our strategy to achieve our medium-term objectives.
Maintain a pro-active M&A list of prospects and targets and participate in due diligence on potential acquisitions.
Support the development of key division-wide strategic initiatives and act as a key resource across the company for research and execution.
Collaborate to communicate our strategic priorities, both to internal and external stakeholders, in an impactful way, providing context, focus and inspiration.
The Director, Strategy role will support the Associate Vice President, Strategy in achieving the overall mandate for the area.

Responsibilities/Day-day Activities;

– Support the implementation of a strategic planning framework and process that engages the Global Ops Executive Committee in effective strategic dialogues, decision-making and planning.
– Develop whitepapers, industry research and competitive profiles to share insights and help the division keep abreast with the external developments.
– Provide market and competitive intelligence as needed to support key.
– Support strategy discussions across the division’s key business units and with strategy groups across the company.
– Assist in research and evaluation of mergers and acquisition opportunities.
– Evaluate external and internal fact-based research targeted to address key strategic questions/issues.
– Support the division in identifying, prioritizing and fully assessing new growth opportunities across regions, businesses, channels and products.
– Act as a resource for insights for annual, quarterly and monthly management reporting deliverables at the divisional level.
– Activities include team forecasting, forecast imports from data teams, and collecting and analyzing date that will be provided to financial planning teams
– Reporting data analysis and identifying trends
– Having presentations for stakeholders on data forecasting

Challenges and opportunities;

The role supports the creation of a new function within the company and requires instituting new ideas, frameworks, and processes across the organization, building a network of individuals in the divisions who will support the effort and gaining credibility as a value-add group. As the function is being newly established the individual will need to work with somewhat fluid and changing responsibilities and can adapt readily to the dynamics of a rapidly growing and changing group. The role is complex, requiring the ability to think broadly on a strategic basis, dialoguing with various subject matter experts across the organization and outside the organization, and the ability to narrowly focus on critical details, provide superior analytical analysis and reasoning, and the ability to crisply communicate issues and solutions in a focused manner.

Candidate Requirements/Must Have Skills:
1. MBA, CA, CFA or comparable designations
2. 5-10 years of relevant, progressively senior experience – with work experience utilizing lateral, out-of-the-box thinking. Hands-on approach to financial planning, analyzing data to solve problems and improve processes within the team.
3. 5+ years worked in financial planning departments in a company or management consulting.
4. Demonstrable experience in strategic analysis – such as financial planning (zero-based budgeting, unit costing) or product/growth strategy or actuarial science
5. Background in strategic planning, management consulting or data analysis and hands on data modelling
6. Strong business acumen, with an aptitude for both strategic, broad thinking and critical and analytical thinking
7. Excellent Excel and PowerPoint skills

Nice-To-Have Skills:
1. Insurance operations experience

Additional Soft Skills Required
– Strong drive and initiative, time management and multi-tasking capabilities
– Superior communication skills, both verbal and written

Education:
• Bachelor’s degree, preference for actuarial science or finance
• MBA, CA, CFA or comparable designations