AVP, Canada Strategy

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do. Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Job Description:

Sun Life Financial is a leading international financial services organization providing a diverse range of insurance, wealth and asset management solutions to individual and corporate Clients. The Canadian Business is Sun Life's largest with over $1B in earnings (~1/3 of all Sun Life Financial globally). We’re a market leader across life, health and wealth in the Canadian Individual and Group marketplace.

The Canada Strategy Team has a mandate to work with senior executives across the business to surface, review, develop, and in some cases, support the enablement of strategies to address opportunities and issues facing the Canadian business. The team leads a portfolio of strategy and transformation projects in partnership with key stakeholders from the business - effectively acting as an internal consulting team to support the Canadian Executive Leadership team. In addition, the team has an accountability to drive the Strategic Planning process, oversee partnership and acquisition processes for Canada, working in close coordination with the Canadian Finance teams and business units.

Reporting to the VP Canada Strategy (head of Canada strategy, member Canadian Executive team), the successful candidate will be responsible for the end-to-end design and delivery of strategic projects, employing substantial problem-solving and analytical capabilities, strategic thinking and insight generation, and effective communication and relationship skills. They will be expected to steer, develop, manage, mentor and retain a high-performing strategy team of around 4-6 FTEs and should be highly independent in their ability to execute strategy projects and manage senior stakeholder relationships.

What will you do?

• Strategic Project Execution - Managing and executing strategic projects, from start to finish, includes project design and scoping, aligning partner expectations, defining the project approach, project management, providing updates, and the timely delivery of project impact
• Problem Solving and Analytics - Conducting or supervising financial analysis, including employing strategic frameworks, interpreting analytical results, generating insights, and writing decks or reports to provide findings and recommendations
• Key contributor to Canada, Business Unit, Enabling Function strategies, including actively raising issues / opportunities and helping to prioritize the key issues.
• Together with VP and President, identify a pipeline of strategy projects for the team to engage on.
• Communication and Dissemination - Presenting results, and engaging partners in discussion on executing next steps and implementing the recommendations, as appropriate. Preparation and presentation of both formal presentations and informal updates on analysis/recommendations for senior management
• Competitive and Market Awareness and Intelligence - Actively building and maintaining awareness of key market and competitive trends and developments, including conducting secondary research, synthesizing research into insights, and understanding implications for Sun Life and its businesses.
• Recruitment, management, development and retention of a high-performing strategy team.
• Strategic planning - lead execution or support execution of a high-quality process across Canada to develop both Business Unit and an overall Canadian Strategic Plan annually to be delivered to the board

What do you need to succeed?

• Excellent oral and written communication, presentation skills, and strong interpersonal skills
• Strong, analytically anchored problem solving skills, with a solid background working with data, conducting analysis, interpreting results, and writing reports/presentations
• Strong influencing skills and stakeholder management skills, including ability to independently interact with / act as thought partner to senior executives, and find areas of mutual benefit
• Team player with proven ability to partner across a large corporate organizations to achieve outcomes
• Strong results-oriented project management skills; well organized, with a high attention to details
• Extensive background in strategy project delivery
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office products (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
• A love for problem solving
• Able to work independently on assignments with appropriate judgement, and demonstrate resourcefulness and perseverance in solving problems and removing roadblocks
• Minimum of 7-10 years relevant business experience, ideally with some experience in insurance or financial services; experience in/or knowledge of Sun Life’s business would be an asset but not required
• University degree in business or related discipline; an undergraduate in business and/or engineering and/or MBA would be an asset
• 3-5 years in top-tier management consulting (or equivalent experience in a Corporate setting)
• Experience analyzing and solving complex business problems
• Experience in financial analytics, including using modelling tools and techniques, would be an asset
• Experience in conducting in-depth secondary research, including collection and synthesis; some experience with primary research would be an asset
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office products (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process or those needing job postings in an alternative format may e-mail a request to thebrightside@sunlife.com.

At Sun Life we strive to create a flexible work environment where our employees are empowered to do their best work. Several flexible work options are available and can be discussed throughout the selection process depending on the role requirements and individual needs.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

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