Director, Frontend Project Delivery

About FWD Group

FWD Group is a pan-Asian life insurance business with more than 11 million customers across 10 markets, including some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world. FWD reached its 10-year anniversary in 2023. The company is focused on making the insurance journey simpler, faster and smoother, with innovative propositions and easy-to-understand products, supported by digital technology. Through this customer-led approach, FWD is committed to changing the way people feel about insurance. Visit [https://www.fwd.com.hk/>

PURPOSE

• Lead the Life front-end technology Project Delivery function that operates across FWD Group
• Collaborate with FWD country and functions to drive operationalization of technology solution prioritization and execution
• Deliver optimized technology solutions to drive operational efficiencies in line with target operating models and business goals
• Build and lead a comprehensive, leading practice, solution delivery operations, to enable & accelerate FWD to achieve Polaris Digital & Cloud enabled transformations

KEY ACCOUNTAIBILITIES

• Act as a subject mater expert of Scrum Master of all the agile development projects
• Develop portfolio roadmaps prioritization, inter-dependency analysis, and organizational constraints to validate and communicate the portfolio components sequencing, dependencies, and strategic alignment between Group and local market level
• Immerse and work closely with local team to ensure deep understanding of business units/stakeholder groups’ critical needs and priorities.
• Facilitate, influence and collaborate with the entire Group & market technology team to identify options and plans to fulfill the 3-year Group Technology Strategy objectives
• Facilitate solutions alignment, prioritization and delivery in concert with Group/Country technology, functions and business leaders
• Partner and work collaboratively with Group Platforms and respective business, functions, country and peer Technology teams to embed technologies to achieve target business outcomes, and benefits realizing through technologies
• Work closely with countries and business functions on budget assessments and approvals for implementation and operationalization to drive business benefit and efficiencies
• Steward the management of technology projects through its life cycle, including resources planning, budget monitoring, clients’ expectation management, change management, contingency planning, risk assessment and mitigation
• End-to-end management for each market-detailed program, scope covered, budget, resource allocation, delivery, maintenance and stakeholder management
• Direct a team of professionals and third-party vendors or service providers towards reaching organizational goals related to programs.
• Keen awareness of dependencies between projects and delivery vision, and the build the strategy to lead and oversee the teams to architect, design and deliver the next pilots of IT Programs
• Develop the portfolio risk management plan, using governance risk guidelines, processes, and procedures and other organizational assets to capitalize on opportunities and respond to risks to ensure projects are on track
• Design, develop and implement operating policies as well as drive the adoption of Agile practices and values for projects and programs within the organization, including the implementation of Scrum process framework across the different markets and local teams.
• Provide critical thinking, thoughtful leadership and problem solving in regard to business and technology solutions delivery bringing high impact to business value and overall operational excellence

QUALIFICATIONS / EXPERIENCE

• University degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or equivalent, minimum 15 years' working experience in Information Technology, with at least 6 years at a senior manager position or above, specialized in program management or system development
• Proven leadership experience
• Proven track records in managing front-end systems, preferably experiences in implementing insurance IT systems/projects in multi-geography environment

KNOWLEDGE & TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Solid understanding of the technology industry, including current and emerging digital solutions
• Exemplify good interpersonal and communication skills at all levels of business users, IT, partners and vendors
• Deep appreciation of latest and emerging technologies and practice, such as DevOps, Cloud, Microservice and Mobile development
• Implementation experience in Life insurance systems, e.g. Point of sales, compensation system, workflow will be an advantage