In today’s rapidly evolving financial services landscape, operational resilience is paramount. It encompasses the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions. As financial institutions face increasing threats from cyber incidents, natural disasters, and regulatory changes, maintaining operational resilience is crucial to safeguarding critical operations and ensuring business continuity.
We seek a dynamic, experienced leader to oversee implementation of Business Continuity Management program across the organization globally, ensuring Manulife meets its service commitments to customers. This role is responsible for developing the strategies, operating model, and execution methodology pertaining to the design, development, testing, and ongoing maintenance of Business Continuity Plans. By managing risk and fostering preparedness, this leader will ensure our business thrives during challenges and maintains customer, stakeholder, and regulator trust. Ideal candidates will have led or directly supported BCP implementation within core business functions such as operations, customer service, or distribution, not just from a risk or IT perspective. And the candidate has proven experience in developing, testing, and executing business continuity plans during actual disruptions or simulations is required.

TEAM BUILDING, LEADERSHIP AND TRAINING (20%)

• Build and lead a team of 5-10 members with direct and matrix reporting to manage business continuity risks, requiring cross-functional skills in strategy, data, change management, and operational resilience knowledge.
• Develop and lead first line communication and training on business continuity management practices
  This job description does not represent a comprehensive listing of job duties that are required of the employee performing this role. We reserve the right to change duties or assign additional duties at any time with or without notice.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, strategy, operation management, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in Insurance, Banking, or Wealth and Asset Management, with 5+ years in Business Continuity Management or Operations Management role
• Experience leading Business Continuity Planning, Business Impact Analysis, Contingency and Recovery Strategies in a first line of defense role
• Familiarity with regulatory expectations (i.e. OSFI etc).
• Extensive knowledge of discipline of operational resilience and business continuity risk management
• Expert knowledge of risk management principles, best practices, and tools
• Membership in relevant industry groups an asset e.g. Business Continuity Institute, Resilience Information Exchange (RIE)

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience in managing an insurance or wealth management operations is strongly preferred
• High level of self-motivation and keen sense of ’owning’ and delivering on project deliverables
• Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to inspire, motivate, and mentor a diverse and distributed team
• Proven track record in delivering complex, cross-functional, and time sensitive programs that meets business goals and regulatory expectations
• Expertise in working within a global / matrix organization.

The Head, BCP Design and Execution is a newly established Global business role accountable for ensuring effective implementation of the Company’s Business Continuity Risk Management standard across all applicable functional areas. This includes design and development of global strategy on Business Continuity planning, build enterprise capabilities and processes to effectively monitor organization’s risk posture and remediation, and program manage to ensure organization’s compliance to regulatory requirements and business’ resilience objectives are met. This role plays a critical part in ensuring uninterrupted service to customers and meeting regulatory expectations during business disruptions.