Strategy Director

Position Responsibilities:

Strategy implementation and Transformation

• Engage and partner with the Executive Management Team of Vietnam to set the ambition, priorities resources and market strategy of Vietnam to ensure effective alignment with enterprise-wide and Asia strategy, maximize current business platform and identify other growth opportunities
• Enable the development and implementation of the strategic planning process of Vietnam, define strategic initiatives and implementation roadmap in achieving the ambition, financial and non-financial key metrics of Vietnam business
• Cascade and align organization to transform, leveraging the financial plan, business plans, CEO communications, KPIs and annual goals setting and projects business cases
• Drive and monitor the execution of the strategy and transformation projects in alignment with key priorities; provide transparency of key milestones, risks and progress and drive accountability of various functions for delivery of agreed plans to timelines. Track strategic initiatives to ensure they are delivering the benefits defined in the business cases and financial plan
• Lead the transformation of the business across functions due to the new Insurance Business Law and leverage the opportunities to fully digitize the operation, improve customer experience with increase control and monitoring, as well as restructuring the partnership arrangement with our bank partners
• Identify interdependencies, sequencing and risks to ensure we are best positioned to effectively execute our strategy, transformation initiatives and drive performance and growth of the business
• Monitor industry developments, trends and market intelligence; perform benchmarking analysis and peer comparison, including evaluation of new products
• Support ad-hoc special projects that directly deliver values to the business

Integration

• Support the development of an integration plan including establish governance, communications, change management and align with various internal and external stakeholders
• Develop / customize and maintain an integration plan including:
  • clearly define roles, responsibilities, tasks, and key milestones including structure, process and build teams with subject matter expertise to manage various integration activities and continuity plans.
  • Facilitate development of key tracking metrics and success of initiatives aligned with transaction value drivers and synergy plan based on final model of acquirement.
• Proactively identify issues that could impact the successful execution of the integration plan and delivery of the commitments and key metrics defined.  This responsibility involves elevating those issues about which the CEO of Manulife Vietnam and Head of Integration and Transformation should be aware of ahead of time and framing/ positioning ideas to resolve the problem/ mitigate the risk and identify alternative means of effectively handling all pressing issues
• Support the CEO and management team of MVI Life for managing the standalone entity post integration

Required Qualification:

• Bachelor's degree or above
• At least 10 years relevant experiences in strategy / finance / business operations in the insurance industry (life insurance preferred)
• Self-motivated, independent with minimal supervision and excellent interpersonal skills
• Execution focused with a keen problem-solving mindset
• Proven track record to demonstrate strong ability to connect well with peers and interact very successfully with senior business stakeholders and function leads as required
• Vietnam and English fluency.   

Required Qualification:

• Strong business acumen, customer and market focus; proven strategic thinking and execution skills
• Sound knowledge of the life insurance business, bancassurance products and processes
• Proactive and operative with a sense of urgency: has initiative and drive to take ownership of tasks. Not be afraid to ask questions when in doubt and ability to drive things to completion quickly     
• Positively engages with various stakeholders and supports, advocates, communicates and implements change
• Change management/ambiguity: ability to work in a fast-paced environment with incomplete information, but continue to push tasks through based on known information, common sense and asking the right questions
• Detail oriented: important to pay extra attention to detail to ensure the highest quality of work is submitted to senior management for their review
• Research, analysis and problem solving by identifying issues, taking a logical approach to finding an answer based on research and sound analysis
• Project management: ability to drive projects to execution by developing deliverables timelines and effectively managing stakeholders
• Communication: excellent speaking and writing skills are required to convey key messages in a succinct manner
• PowerPoint, Word and Excel: expert skills on PowerPoint with the ability to tell a story and sell a message. Can analyze large quantities of data, generate charts in Excel  

Challenges:

• Change in new Insurance Business Law in Vietnam, leading to the pivot of Manulife's strategic direction and objectives to support the next phase of sustainable growth of the business
• Reclaim leading position in Vietnam and beat competition with focus on addressing customer needs, providing best-in-class services and digitization of our end-to-end operation processes
• Alignment of interests among various functions and with regional office
• Changing regulatory, economic and political environment in the market
• Overcome resistance to change and preventing silos within the organization
• Adoption of new entity model and collaboration with different/multiple stakeholders both internal and external to deploy the integration plan

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact

Working Arrangement