Director Strategic Market Insights, Group Benefits

Dir Strategic Initiatives - NS06AE

We’re determined to make a difference and are proud to be an insurance company that goes well beyond coverages and policies. Working here means having every opportunity to achieve your goals – and to help others accomplish theirs, too. Join our team as we help shape the future.   

         

The Director of Strategic Market Insights, Group Benefits will be responsible for understanding employer and broker market trends, working closely with business leaders in our broker and employer facing organizations and enterprise research teams to develop and implement strategic initiatives that help us grow and meet the market needs for mid to long term today and sell to satisfy market needs. The Director will be able to synthesis market intel, bringing business and communication savvy and work with a sense of urgency to transform strategic ideas into credible and concrete initiatives that will drive success of the business. This role will be based in our Hartford, CT Home Office, on a hybrid basis (Tuesday-Thursday).  

Market assessment, Emerging Trends and Competitive Intelligence

• Partner closely with broker relations, product, and sales leadership to develop and maintain a cadence of regularly engaging with brokers and customers to understand their unmet needs and develop opportunities to test and learn in the market that would create competitive differentiation, take the ideas from determine hypothesis through ideate/concept design to then hand-off to Growth and Innovation lab for test and learn.      

• Provide consumer profiling and analysis to understand existing and marketplace trends leading to the development of customer lifetime value models and customer satisfaction/loyalty analysis. Define and create reporting and analysis initiatives aimed at improving internal organizational competencies such as operational excellence and recruiting and hiring practices.

• Work with the Competitive Intelligence; HIMCO Ventures  and others to ensure that Group Benefits  has a solid appreciation and understanding of market dynamics, competitive threats, emerging trends and innovations.

• When necessary, consult on or lead projects involving external threats and/or emerging opportunities to ensure that Group Benefits strategy remains relevant and fresh.

• Develop and share market assessment, competitive landscape intelligence.

• As a flexible, forward thinker, this leader will effectively build and motivate high-performing teams, make sound decisions, and set clear direction​.

Oversight and Management of Strategy

• Support the development of cohesive strategy, strategic roadmap and implementation plan to drive required growth, profit and strategic ambitions.

• Schedule and facilitate required strategy sessions with leadership team, with a focus on steering conversations to strong conclusions, be it defining our leadership team’s point-of-view on a future trend, or agreeing on actions to advance our strategy

• Track and manage progress to achieve desired outcomes.

• Responsible for effective communications of business strategies.

• Successful execution of this role requires the ability to interact with senior management, understand various audiences and craft communications appropriate for such audiences. Specifically, it requires an ability to "translate" strategic vision/direction into actionable steps and to synthesize significant amounts of information and data points into pertinent messages/themes for relatively broad consumption.

• Develop communication plan for strategy to enlist and excite broader team.

• Support the creation of our Strategy Updates to the Board of Directors, and ensure the final presentations articulate our strategy with clarity and conciseness. Partner with the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and the leadership team broadly, to ensure the presentations represent our strategy, and that the presenter(s) are well-prepared to deliver the presentations.

Qualifications:

• Executive Storytelling Skills are critical. The ability to synthesize disparate information, including differing points-of-view, disparate trends, and our own strategy, and to tell a simple, straightforward “story” that resonates with an audience. Audiences include the Group Benefits l Leadership Team, Executive Leadership (including the President and CEO), the Board of Directors, Market Segment Leadership Team and our organization broadly.

• Understanding of the Group Benefits industry and marketplace dynamics with working experience understanding GB Brokers Dynamics

• Ability to partner with, and influence, senior executives