Assistant Vice President, Group Partnership

About FWD Group

FWD Group is a pan-Asian life insurance business with more than 13 million customers across 10 markets, including some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world. The company was established in 2013 and is focused on changing the way people feel about insurance. FWD’s customer-led and digitally enabled approach aims to deliver innovative propositions, easy-to-understand products and a simpler insurance experience.

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Purpose
- Drive performance improvement as measured by APE and VNB in our bank partnerships
- Lead M&A activities from Partnership Distribution team perspective

Key accountabilities
- Thought leader to support FWD achieving its strategic goals as partner-of-choice for rapidly digitizing banks
- Represent FWD in formal governance situations (e.g. Steering Committees - both internal and with Bank partners). Lead, provide leadership and direction to junior members of the team
- Liaise with Group Distribution Strategy & Governance, Group Finance and Group M&A and Strategy for new partnership opportunities
- Actively provide recommendations to BU on bancassurance deal structure and lead discussion on partnership deals (source/select right partners considering BU work capacity, workload for launch and business impact)
- Constructively challenge and support local banca teams to identify and implement improvement initiatives
- Advise local BU on different commercial models for digital company partnerships
- Structure and provide guidance to local BU for sales projections and proposal development
- Lead partnership opportunities from negotiation, identifying Distribution Agreements terms/conditions
- Provide guidance and bridge between Group Office / BU on digibank proposals (analysis on different customer segments, account management and partnership support requirement, joint marketing activities and bundled product/ promotion offers, opportunities for digital banc products)
- Build out excellence in lead tracking and lead management
- Support sales force effectiveness and Sales Force analytics
- Ensure we successfully cover different segment groups in the banks (HNW, lower mass, SME and ecosystems in particular)
- Compliance and sales quality and consistency monitoring, e.g. mystery shopping)
- Provide guidance and knowledge transfer on partnership renewal terms
- Provided advice on Affluent propositions around products, UW, policy servicing, customer services and marketing and events/ campaigns
- Representative from Partnership Distribution in driving ELITE Partnership initiatives, e.g. Banca 2.0-4.0, to enhance sellers experience and improve customer journey.
- Lead and provide best practices on expansion - such as telemarketing and broker channels

Qualifications / experience
- Minimum 15 years’ experience with proven track record in Asian bancassurance, in both insurance and bank roles
- Experience in a regional function, knows how to get results through influencing and persuasion, able to work together successfully with senior bank stakeholders
- Ability to represent the organization externally.
- Ability to lead, influence without authority and collaborate with external partners
- Ability to build and maintain strong internal relationships as well as with the bank stakeholders
- In depth insights in bancassurance trends
- High cultural awareness across Asia markets

Knowledge & technical skills
- Strong understanding of life insurance products, and partnership distribution channel operations and strategies
- Strong in business financials; Analytical thinking
- Strong communication skills; fluency in spoken and written English essential
- Excellent organizational, problem solving and communication skills.
- Able and willing to work independently and act as team lead in a cross-functional environment
- Skilled in partner engagement for ideation and problem-solving facilitation with stakeholders.
- Good understanding of project management methodologies, framework and standards.