Vice President, Head of Operations Technology

Group 1001 is a consumer-centric, technology-driven family of insurance companies on a mission to deliver outstanding value and operational performance by combining financial strength and stability with deep insurance expertise and a can-do culture. Group1001’s culture emphasizes the importance of collaboration, communication, core business focus, risk management, and striving for outcomes. This goal extends to how we hire and onboard our most valuable assets – our employees.

Job Summary

Group 1001 is embarking on a multi-year journey to transform its operations team to support the firm’s vision of becoming a next-gen financial services company. Its mission is to provide an exceptional client journey that aligns with our brand and values, establishes human connection, and exceeds client expectations by delivering timely, personalized solutions while leveraging modern technology.

This role is a key partner to the COO and a member of the operational leadership team who will oversee the operations technology team covering three of Group 1001’s established franchises: Delaware Life Insurance Company (DLIC), Clear Spring Life and Annuity Company (CSLAC), and Gainbridge Life Insurance Company (GLIC). This dedicated team will play a fundamental role in our future tasked with identifying, assessing, and deploying various forms of technology to transform and enhance our operations center. This team’s mandate will be focused on deploying technology to achieve the following results:

• Drive scalability (reduction in the future number of people needed to service new business, inforce, and the contact center); increasing efficiency (increasing productivity of the current workforce), and enhancing the client experience (focusing people efforts on the key moments of the client journey while leveraging technology at the non-client facing interactions).

This individual will lead a team that includes the following functions: (i) an existing sales technology team responsible for annuity order entry platforms and electronic data interchanges (ie DTCC) and (ii) build a technology product team overseeing an expanding universe of technology focused tools designed to meet the operations team’s objectives. Specifically, this team will consist of product owners overseeing such tools as workflow technology, contact center tech (ie. voice, chat, SMS), API’s, data, counter-fraud, AI, and other advanced technologies. As technology’s role in our operations center continues to expand it will be expected this team’s oversight of those tools will expand with it.

Additionally, the operations technology team will be responsible for:

• Scouting for novel technology solutions for operations,
• Assessing the impact of current and future technology solutions on operations (scalability, efficiency, and client experience)
• Measuring the efficacy of deployed technology solutions using quantitative metrics linking them to our OKR’s,
• Training operations personnel on proper utilization of advanced technology solutions, and
• Creation of a feedback loop once the solutions are deployed to end users for continuous improvement.

This individual will possess a strong technological acumen that they will combine with a solid understanding of the financial services industry and specifically the insurance business to achieve the goals mentioned above.

Main Accountabilities:

• Partner with stakeholders to define business value-creating use cases utilizing technology and leveraging operational data and analytics.
• Identify, recommend, and implement new technologies to improve and streamline administrative processes, use of resources and deliver an exceptional, differentiated client experience.
• Coordinate with multiple stakeholders across the organization to ensure alignment of departmental decision and project plans with the organization’s goals.
• Maintain understanding of emerging technologies and trends in operations management.
• Technology Product Team: build a team from the bottom up comprised of operational technologists who have ownership over the following technology tools (not an exhaustive list):
  • Contact Center Tech: deploy modules within the Amazon Connect contact center tech stack across the various call centers.
  • Data and Reporting: collaborate with operations leadership team members to define key business indicators, their data sources, and metrics, and design data management capabilities to make them available for insights.
  • API: work with key internal stakeholders to develop and execute a comprehensive API strategy for third party (distribution) partners.
  • AI/Advanced Technologies: work with the firm’s AI team to ideate, develop and deploy P