Senior Product Management Specialist

The Senior Product Management Specialist will play a key role in delivering planned new winning propositions for our customers, whilst ensuring the existing propositions remain attractive, profitable and compliant. With strong leadership and communication skills, the role holder will need to ensure delivery of proposition outcomes through confident and effective communication to motivate and engage a multi-disciplinary team across the jurisdictions. As a source of expert technical knowledge, the role holder will provide specific advice and support to the Head of Product Development, working with the other colleagues on a variety of proposition projects and be responsible for the successful delivery of key components of product development.

Key Responsibilities

Proposition Evaluation: Manage the evaluation of propositions initially, throughout the product development life cycle and post implementation.

• Rigorously interrogate propositions in their early stages of development, ensuring that all material aspects of the proposition (target market, sales angles, product features, product financials / KPIs, tax & legal and competitive factors) have been assessed and any issues identified.
• Continuously challenge assumptions throughout the product development life cycle and escalate any issues identified, advising of implications and recommending an appropriate course of action.

Product Design: Assume responsibility for leading specific product development initiatives and shaping the design of those initiatives.

• Support the design of product charging and commission structures that yield sufficient margin for UWS while remaining attractive for customers and distributors.
• Design death benefit features for new products including insurance features, underwriting and reinsurance arrangements.
• Design other product features incorporating tax & legal regulations that apply in a given jurisdiction.
• Develop product specifications which clearly outline features for product, system and process enhancement.
• Lead cross functional workshops to shape design of new product features and processes.

Product Delivery: Oversee delivery of product developments from initial concept to full implementation, managing stakeholder expectations throughout the process.

• Act as business lead for product developments ensuring the teams involved deliver a solution in line with the product specification.
• Ensure that all aspects of product delivery are managed appropriately and that stakeholder expectations are met.
• Review and sign off business requirements and functional specification for functionality related to system calculated values incl. illustrations, Fees & Commissions, Death Benefits items above.
• Define system testing and review test outputs for items above.
• Ensure that the needs of both customers and distribution partners are captured in delivery of new propositions.

Product Reviews: Conduct periodic product reviews to ensure that existing products remain fit for purpose from a commercial, regulatory and operational perspective and that it continues to produce good customer outcomes.

• Assess commercial performance and market position of UWS’s products.
• Engage with internal stakeholders to get assurance that the product remains compliant with the local regulations.
• Conduct operational review of the product to identify any issues with operational processes that need to be resolved.
• Report findings of each review to senior management, making recommendations about required changes for each product.

Change Initiatives: Manage the assessment and delivery of small change requests and propositional enhancements, ensuring that the solution is robust from a product, process and literature perspective.

• Lead small change and propositional enhancement requests once potential enhancements to product features, systems or processes are identified.
• Assess change requests from across UWS and lead the design of solutions that impact product features, systems or processes.
• Engage with impacted departments to ensure that the end-to-end solution that gets delivered works from an operational perspective.

Regulatory Changes: Analyse and interpret newly issued regulations that impact on propositions or product development and lead delivery of propositional solutions driven by these changes.

• Analyse newly issued regulations that impact on propositions or product development and interpret the implications for propositions and the product lifecycle management process.
• Lead the delivery of any changes required to propositions or the product lifecycle management process due to newly issued regulations.

Stakeholder Engagement: Establish and maintain strong relationships with key internal (e.g. sales) and external (e.g. distribution partners) stakeholders.

• Establish positive working relationship with colleagues in all functions that have a role in the product development process.
• Support sales colleagues in shaping their propositions, understanding their needs and ensuring that they are informed on some of the key aspects that they need to consider when putting forward new commercial initiatives.
• Establish relationships with key distributors to gain an insight into their view of UWS and how the company can provide a more customised solution that will meet their requirements.

Key Tasks

See Key Responsibilities above

Key Requirements

Knowledge – Experience or qualifications

• Formal Professional Qualification – Actuarial, Financial.
• Individual with at least 3 years’ experience in a product development or technical role within a life insurance company.
• Knowledge of key recent European regulatory developments (IDD, PRIIPs, MiFID, Solvency II).
• Familiarity with insurance policy administration systems.
• Experience of market analysis, customer research and distribution management.
• Experience in a cross-border insurance environment.

Skills

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate complicated matters simply and succinctly.
• Planning and project management skills to deliver according to business needs and timescales. Ability to overcome obstacles and/or procrastination that has the ability to delay or de-rail other projects of business.
• Excellent IT skills, MS Excel in particular.

Behaviours

• Driven, results orientated individual with the ability to work alone and as part of a diverse and often geographically split team.
• On schedule delivery of required deliverables to the highest standards of quality and accuracy.
• Ability to simultaneously apply forensic attention to detail without losing focus of delivery on the overall end goal and objectives.

Target Grade

Group Group Utmost Group Limited

Company

Company Utmost Holdings Ireland Limited

Entity

Entity UHIL - USIL

Business Department

Business Department USIL - Proposition Management & Development #J-18808-Ljbffr