Chief Operations Officer (General Insurance Kenya)

Job Purpose:

The Chief Operations Officer will be accountable for Overseeing the technical and non-technical operations supporting General Insurance Business with a core mandate to drive a robust underwriting and claims function to drive growth in underwriting profitability.

The role holder will also be responsible for setting and driving strategic direction and providing executive leadership and management to the business operations, focusing on ensuring the department’s performance meets or exceeds customer expectations while concurrently driving operational efficiencies. The role will play a significant role in developing and implementing processes and technology solutions necessary to achieve the organization’s business goals and objectives.

Key responsibilities

• Oversee compliance with underwriting and claims guidelines and reinsurance treaty provisions in underwriting and claims
• Oversee compliance with administration mandates for pension customers
• Oversee the administration of treaty and facultative treaties including specialty risk structuring/pricing negotiations
• Collaborate with IT and Customer Experience team to drive seamless customer experience
• Collaborate with BD team in retention of customers/intermediaries
• Collaborate with BD in specialty risk structuring/sales
• Ensures inter-departmental coordination for business and operational efficiency
• Leading and executing the operational strategy of the business by establishing and enforcing organizational goals, policies and operating procedures
• Defines the service operations strategy to ensure the business provides world-class service to all customer segments.
• Ensure operational efficiency in Claims, Underwriting, Reinsurance, Group Life, Pension and AMC operations departments in accordance with established SLAs.
• Put in place standards for interdepartmental service level agreements that will improve the company’s service ratings
• Defines annual operating budget for Operations and ensures unit operates at or below budget
• Manage key relationships with clients, intermediaries and service providers in the market by ensuring that service to customers and producers meets their expectations
• Provide effective leadership and direction to the various departmental heads. Managing and developing the team of Claims and Underwriting specialists
• Carry out market intelligence to ensure the company is in tandem with industry trends and adopts pricing mechanisms that ensure profitability across all products.
• Driving process mapping and restructuring to obtain optimal operations with a clear bias for cost containment and fraud management. Identifies and implements on-going improvement initiatives to improve performance for Operations
• Oversee and give technical guidance on all complex and large risks – both underwriting, claims and
• Evaluate reinsurance data and recommend changes where applicable to ensure a robust and optimal reinsurance program – Kenya and the Group
• Review facultative placements, fronting, and special acceptance -waivers to ensure no expenditure
• Ensure adherence of all regulatory requirements with regards to reinsurance, claims and technical acceptance of risks
• Delegated Authority: As per the approved Delegated Authority Matrix
• Perform any other duties as may be assigned from time to time

Key Performance Measures

• Drive increase in CSAT and NPS for corporate customers and intermediaries
• Drive customer retention rate
• Drive improvement in loss and expense ratio for corporate business
• Drive fraud mitigation in claims
• Drive compliance with various regulatory and contractual and internal policy requirements within operations

Knowledge, experience and qualifications required

• Bachelors’ degree in a business related filed
• Masters’ degree is an added advantage
• Professional qualification in Insurance (FIA/ SOA/ ACII/FLMI/AIIK)
• 7-10 years’ experience in the insurance industry 3-4 of which must be in a senior management
• Proven experience as an Operations Manager within a Financial Services Industry (Banking and Finance/ Insurance).
• Extensive experience in ensuring operational risks are identified and managed.
• Significant experience in process mapping and restructuring to obtain optimal operations with a focus on cost containment and fraud management
• A deep understanding of leveraging data, technology and processes to standardise and automate operations, reducing turn-around times on all key business processes.
• A demonstrated track record in optimising operations to enhance the overall customer experience at all customer contact points.

Leadership category responsibility framework (Core Competencies)

Leaders of Leaders in Britam need to:

• Ensure Business Objectives are met;

• Be vision carriers; facilitate, drive and extract the vision for the business with the functional team;

• Ensure the successful implementation of the strategy;

• Ensure a sustainable business over a long-term defined vision;

• Have a global understanding of business practices and local application;

• Have a long-term view on profit, functions and processes;

• Grow stakeholder value over the long-term;

• Grow profitably across products and all business units;

• Engage in continuous brand building to become the trusted partners to customers;

• Develop innovative partnerships and distribution channels to increase market penetration;

• Appropriately allocate funds and capital to maximise shareholder value;

• Work strategically to ensure market leading position;

• Adequately manage operational risk.

Leaders of Leaders Competency Descriptions.

• Leading and Supervising – Provides the business with a clear direction based on the overall strategic intent of the organisation; motivates and empowers others with a clear sense of purpose; creates a positive organisational climate that fosters learning and development; acknowledges high potential talent; sets and articulates the vision and values through own personal behaviour.

• Relating and Networking – Easily establishes, as well as assists others in building meaningful relationships with customers and staff across all areas of the business, inside and outside of the organisation; relates well to people at all levels; facilitates the resolutions of conflict and manages disagreements with tact and diplomacy.

• Persuading and Influencing – Gains clear agreement and commitment from others by persuading, convincing and negotiating to the benefit of the organisation; promotes the organisational strategy during conversations; makes effective use of political processes to influence and persuade others; promotes ideas on behalf of oneself, the department or the organisation; makes a strong personal impact on others; takes care to manage the organisation’s impression and brand on others.

• Formulating Strategies and Concepts – Works strategically to realise organisational goals; sets and develops organisational strategies; identifies and develops positive and compelling visions of the organisation’s future potential; takes account of a wide range of issues across, and related to the organisation; encourages others to take a strategic and long-term view in terms of the organisation’s future; communicates the organisational strategy, vision and objectives effectively across all levels of the organisation.

• Entrepreneurial and Commercial Thinking- Keeps up to date with competitor information and market trends; identifies business opportunities for the organisation; maintains awareness of developments, changes, trends and possible risks in the organisational structure and politics; demonstrates financial awareness; ensures costs are monitored and controlled and thinks in terms of profit, loss and added value.

• Adapting and Responding to change – Anticipates and effectively adapts to changing circumstances and ambiguous situations; accepts and actively drives new ideas and change initiatives; adapts interpersonal style to suit different individuals and situations; adapts organisational strategy to take industry changes into consideration.

• Presenting and Communicating Information – Speaks fluently; expresses the organisational strategy, mission, vision, objectives as well as opinions, information and key points of an argument clearly; makes presentations and undertakes public speaking with skill and confidence; represents the organisational brand effectively, responds quickly to the needs of an audience and to their reactions and feedback; projects credibility and authority.

• Creating and Innovating – Promotes organisational improvement; produces and encourages new ideas, approaches, or insights; creates the environment for innovative products or designs; produces a range of solutions to the strategic benefit of the organisation.

• Achieving Personal Work Goals and Objectives – Accepts and tackles demanding organisational and departmental goals with enthusiasm; lead by example by working hard and putting in longer hours in order to ensure successful implementation and completion of strategic projects; show self-insight in own development needs.

• Adhering to Principles and Values – Upholds and encourages ethical behaviour and organisational values; demonstrates integrity; promotes and defends equal opportunities, builds diverse teams; encourages organisational and individual responsibility towards the community and the environment; models the organisational values during every day interactions.

• Analysing – Strategically analyses sources of information, breaking them into component parts, patterns and relationships; makes rational judgements from the available, as well as missing information; demonstrates an understanding of how one issue may be part of a much larger system.

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