Product Manager: Underwriting

Momentum Group Limited (Momentum Group) is a significant player in South Africa's life insurance and integrated financial services sectors. We are a proud Level 1 B-BBEE South African-based group dedicated to building and protecting our clients' financial dreams. Our client-facing retail and specialist brands, including renowned names such as Momentum, Metropolitan, Guardrisk, and Eris Properties, play a pivotal role in fulfilling this purpose.

Our federated model emphasises empowerment, accountability, and continuous engagement with all our stakeholders. Designed in close consultation with leaders across the group, this operating model aims to unleash each business unit's inherent energy and commercial drive through our collaborative federated approach. Visit us at

Disclaimer As an applicant, please verify the legitimacy of this job advert on our company career page.

Role Purpose
Take holistic accountability to achieve the objectives set for product (Underwriting & Product), this includes driving the development of new initiatives within a product and seeing them through to implementation.

Requirements
Experience and Qualifications
The following experience and qualification will be required:

• Grade 12 or equivalent qualification
• Bachelor's Degree with specialisation in Actuarial Science
• Progression with the actuarial board exams
• 5 years' management experience
• 5 - 8 years actuarial short-term insurance experience

Duties & Responsibilities
Responsibilities and work outputs:
Internal Process

• In close collaboration with the product owner, plan for and take joint accountability for the implementation of the product (this includes product development in response to the products' strategies and the market needs)
• Conduct by-annual product reviews to monitor and maintain the ongoing viability of existing initiatives with product to ensure that they still profitable, appropriately costed, competitive, marketable, and meet clients need, in order to deliver on the objectives for the product
• Facilitate a team of people from different disciplines to enable collaboration with all stakeholders both internal and external to the Momentum Group
• Ensure the implementation of development strategies to ensure the delivery to the products' strategic focus areas around client obsession, growth and excellence to enable our safety value proposition.
• Ensure that the product development capability operates on an innovative, profitable, competitive and financially viable basis through an optimised packaging model
• Ensure that products operate within the Momentum Group's governance framework and that products continue to be maintained within this framework.
• Align all product development solutions to development principles of the Momentum Group for new business and existing business that are relevant to the product and set objectives
• Work collaboratively with the other business unit's and provide excellent, effective and efficient product development capabilities.
• Actively participate in the research and monitoring of the industry, target market and competitors to identify opportunities and threats as well as areas for improvement or optimisation in operations
• Contribute to related processes to continuously grow the target market and influence client experience
• Influence new business, marketing and communication processes incorporating product development, and client experience to improve the understanding and acceptance of product solutions in the market
• Contribute to the optimisation and delivery of the client value proposition in partnership with other products and BU's (where relevant)
• Develop, build and maintain product development process in respect of client experience, client management and business development
• Continuously strive to enhance and improve the product development processes.
• Design, implement, monitor and report on a process to gather organisational intelligence regarding the application product development practices, processes, documentation and business values.
• Contribute and ensure compliance to the Momentum Groups' governance, relevant legislation and risk mitigation strategies
• Identify and mitigate risk associated with the existing initiatives with the product by assessing the relevant features
• Provide insights to other functional areas, segments and channels to enable innovative client centric solution and client experience design
• Improve client offering through enhancements on existing initiatives within the product in order to ultimately increase shareholder value
• Reporting on the products' performance and compliance to keep the relevant stakeholders and also measure the performance, and regulatory compliance
• Build costing models in order to conduct sensitivity testing for value of new business (where relevant)
• Build financial projection models to simulate the probable value of the initiatives within the product or the client outcomes given proposed changes, and apply judgement on the suitability of the proposed solutions

Client Services

• Provide authoritative, expertise and advice to clients and stakeholders
• Build and maintain relationships with clients and internal stakeholders
• Make recommendations to improve CVP and business outcomes
• Participate and contribute to a culture which builds rewarding relationships, facilitates feedback and provides exceptional client service

People

• Create a positive work climate and culture to energise employees, give meaning to work, minimise work disruption and maximise employee productivity
• Demonstrate exemplary leadership behaviour, through personal involvement, commitment and dedication in support of organisational values
• Select and recruit suitably qualified talent in line with Employment Equity principles and the Momentum Group values and/ or behaviours
• Drive a culture that guides and directs best practice, fostering an environment of continuous learning, improvement and cohesiveness
• Enable a learning and growth culture whereby information regarding successes, issues, trends and ideas are actively shared between team members
• Execute effective workforce planning practices to ensure that staffing requirements are accurately forecasted
• Identify employee growth and development needs and schedule interventions to enable ongoing development, training and personal growth.
• Effectively manage performance within the team in order to ensure business objectives are achieved
• Encourage innovation, change agility and collaboration within the team

Finance

• Contribute to the financial planning process within area
• Identify opportunities to enhance cost effectiveness and increase operational efficiency
• Provide input into the risk identification processes and communicate recommendations in the appropriate forum

Competencies
Competencies required:

• Business Acumen
• Client/ Stakeholder Commitment
• Drive for Results
• Collaboration
• Impact and influence
• Self-Awareness and Insight