Head of Customer Service & Operations

Description and Requirements
Job Summary :
Drives and effectively manages the efforts of the Operations Departments : New Business/Underwriting, Policy Owner Services, Claims, Call Center, Billing & Collections, supporting business lines relevant to the country. Providing both strategic and tactical direction in accordance with Corporate and Company plans to deliver Corporate and Company goals as well as contributing to the overall business strategy. Promoting sharing of expertise, leverage of scale, operation risk control, development of a differentiated customer service experience, designing and delivering process optimization and innovation and ensuring financial objectives of the Operations and Company are met.
Principal Accountabilities of Position :
Strategic

• Translates and executes CSO and Country business strategy for the Country Customer and Service Operations Department Heads
• Helps each Department within CSO develop operations strategy in accordance with EMEA's and the MetLife Europe CSO strategy as well as Country business strategy.
• Participates in the strategy development of the Country for both CSO and the business.
• Lead major transformational projects and initiatives with the aim to deliver a differentiated customer experience, simplify operations with global consistency, strengthen the foundation with an engaged workforce focused on operational risk and professional operating practices and leverage the scale through better knowledge
• Ensures Customer Centricity strategic decisions are taken and implemented; allocates resources and implements projects to sustain the entire company's strategy
• Monitor, evaluate and sponsors the enhancement of IT systems, in partnership and coordination with the Chief Information Officer

Management
• Leads and motivates the CSO management team to deliver through effective team working; creates a culture which constructively engages employees; manage the performance, train, and develop colleagues to secure their commitment and competence, and drives performance and results.

• Ensure day to day operations of the business are efficiently, effectively, and pro-actively managed to relevant internal and external service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) e.g., abandonment rates, turnaround times for all processes, cost control, NPS, claims ratio etc.
• Identify opportunities to leverage cross-departmental strengths to take advantage of new opportunities and/or to address organizational challenges
• Manage the relationships with CSO Outsourced Providers to meet SLAs and KPIs through key relationship owners e and manage business conservation/retention - optional depending on if this is managed by CSO

• To ensure understanding and adherence to MetLife Code of Conduct and, where appropriate, compliance with all relevant regulatory policies.
Operational

• Accountable for operational performance ensuring operational processes function as required
• Helps each Department develop appropriate targets, priorities, and service levels.
• Leads continuous improvement/reengineering of processes within the Operations to find and develop actionable plans to increase customer service & operations effectiveness, efficiency, quality, customer satisfaction, and persistency
• Develop budgets of the departments to ensure that plans support the objectives of high-quality service to the customers and increased productivity.

• Execute plan and maintain operating expense ratio within budgets including strict costs optimization and customer metrics.

• Monitor operations financials - provide alerts, information, and advice for resolving undesired variances
• Ensure that appropriate authorizations for approval, operational and financial controls are in place
• Provides input to and agrees on financial goals and measures; analyses financial trends for issues and opportunities from an CSO perspective.
• Develop and manage priorities under the operations to support the business objectives and plans in a risk-controlled environment
• Ensures compliance with all regulatory, corporate, and internal procedures.

People

• Identifies and develops talent, assures succession planning to keep the business continuity
• Ensure effective communication between management and members of operations departments
• Train, coach, manage, develop, and retain staff as are required.

Job Specifications :
Competencies
• Strong relationship skills with the ability to build rapport, negotiate win-win solutions and create a positive, collaborative environment, Involving and influencing key stakeholders in the change process.
• Strong ability to communicate a business case and influence decisions for change to senior leadership
• Excellent oral and written communication skills (English must) - the ability to convey a broad array of information, issues, and recommendations succinctly and accurately across multiple cultures and geographies.
• Demonstrated ability to leverage key relationships with internal and external partners
• Daily resolution of complex operational issues, in relation with systems, process, or people issues, or all of that at the same time
• Strong innovation capabilities that speed up the processes, various e-solutions to locally support and implement MetLife global strategy
• Analytic and decisive decision maker with the ability to prioritize and communicate to staff key objectives and tactics necessary to achieve organizational goals
• Successful experience with evaluating new ideas and implementing resulting strategies.
• Unwavering commitment to high quality processes and services levels
Skills
• Demonstrated ability to lead multiple, complex initiatives and organizational transformation projects and program development
• Well organized and able to lead others in a team environment involving multiple departments, sites, and organization levels.
• Deep understanding of insurance environment and internal insurance company procedures
• Knowledge of legal and regulatory framework, competitor landscape, distribution channels, insurance products and external regulatory bodies' requirements
• Capability to organize and manage complex flows, interdepartmental activities, sales environment know how, customer orientation, risk management, product, audit & compliance know how
• Ability to analyze and solve problems in the complex environment with multiple internal and external (legal and regulatory) constrains considering business and customer centricity objectives
Experience
• 7+ years of large-scale insurance operations experience with Life and/or Medical insurance lines for individual and group customers.
• Post graduate studies a plus
• Grounded experience in management of teams and engagement of the employees
• Track record of effectively leading a direct service organization with a complex array of projects, processes, and services level agreements
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