Director, Operational Resilience

at  Sun Life

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.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Sun Life and our peers operate in a complex risk environment, with increasing threats posed to our critical operations from events like control failures, third-party disruptions, infrastructure outages, technology failures, cyber incidents, geopolitical incidents, pandemics, and natural disasters. A robust and concerted approach to operational resilience can enhance Sun Life’s ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from these events while continuing to deliver our critical operations. This is key to protecting our clients and ensuring our services are available, when needed, through disruption.
The Director, Operational Resilience will work alongside the AVP, Operational Resilience to lead the effective delivery of the anticipated multi-year effort for Sun Life to gain compliance with OSFI’s E-21 Guideline. This revised Guideline will provide significantly new requirements addressing the transition from traditional Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery approaches to those of Operational Resilience. Further, this role will be pivotal in establishing the longer-term business as usual processes for Operational Resilience and formation of the permanent team which will be put in place to manage compliance requirements, standards and processes for Sun Life moving forward.
The scope of this role is Global in nature, and will report to the AVP, Operational Resilience.

WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING

OSFI E-21 Operational Resilience Program:

• Establishment of standards & practices related to delivering compliance to the key/required elements of E-21 Guideline
• Participation in & leading activities associated to developing a repeatable foundation for the mapping of critical operations end-to-end, inclusive of the following programs/disciplines:
• Technology
• People
• Premises
• Data
• Third Parties
• Processes (BCP, DR plans, containment playbooks, process documentation – SOPs, operational design, internal controls (RCAs), etc.
• Leadership of key workstreams within the Operational Resilience program to ensure critical operations are effectively & consistently identified
• Development of tracking mechanisms with respect to resilience assessment, gaps, and remediation plans
• Management of Risk identification across the operational resilience assets/resources
• Leads, communicates and/or collaborates, as needed, with Business Groups, Corporate Functional Areas, and DBTS on requirements necessary for E-21 compliance.
• Key role in the early Pilot phase of this work in Q4/24 to gain learnings and understanding of the framework that will be leveraged across Sun Life globally as the scope of work is expanded in 2025 and beyond a single critical operation (within Pilot scope) to that of all our critical operations.
• This role will become a subject-matter expert in Operational Resilience requirements

Staffing:

• Build out of a high-performance team capable of delivering initially on the Program requirements, subsequently structuring it for ongoing support and efficiency
• Leads a team of individuals who will be brought on board to initially manage the delivery of the Operational Resilience Program, and will then transition into operational business-as-usual as the Program fulfills its mandate and standard operations are stood up
• Establishment of a centre of excellence for Enterprise Operational Resilience standards, processes & requirements.
• Assist with the development and training of staff as they are brought onboard, and this new team is formed.

On-Going Business-as-Usual Operations:

• As this complex multi-year program considers business-as-usual operations, this role will be critical to lead the transition across the various programs/disciplines (Technology, People, Premises, Data, Third Parties, Processes) that represents the appropriate timing for transition.
• As the Program shifts to an on-going business-as-usual scenario, this Director, Enterprise Risk Management will shift their primary focus from one of Program/Workstream leadership to that of running a centre of excellence for Operational Resilience.