Prudential's purpose is to be partners for every life and protectors for every future. Our purpose encourages everything we do by creating a culture in which diversity is celebrated and inclusion assured, for our people, customers, and partners. We provide a platform for our people to do their best work and make an impact to the business, and we support our people's career ambitions. We pledge to make Prudential a place where you can Connect, Grow, and Succeed.
The finance team within PHKL supports the business teams (e.g., Agency, Customer, etc.) with reviewing and strengthening business cases for commercial initiatives (e.g., client campaigns and agency initiatives). These initiatives drive the performance of PHKL and therefore a short 'time-to-market' is essential. In this context the business partner role has been created to maintain swift and clear communication lines between teams, function as a first point of contact for escalation on critical matters, help both the finance and business teams work through stakeholder feedback by acting as a SME on business case preparation. With these activities, the business partner contributes significantly to a short turnaround time from drafting the business case to final approval, accelerating realisation of business benefits.
Job Descriptions:
- Drive and lead the completion of key strategic business case processes between finance and the business teams.
- Work with both the finance teams and business teams to ensure that the business case and any related documentation clearly reflects the business rationale and benefits coming out of the initiative, and that these justify the investment costs.
- Where there are differences of opinions between teams, facilitate meetings or other approaches to get to an agreement. This requires the business partner to understand the needs from both sides (i.e., in detail understanding of the finance requirements and what the business teams envision to achieve and why) and able to find a middle ground acceptable to both.
- Timely spot areas where there will or might be a divergence in opinion and escalate that to the Senior Director to discuss with the relevant EXCO-members. The business partner is responsible to escalate these matters in a concise and clear way (and understands how best to present matters to the ExCo level and working level), facilitate meetings by presenting management summaries of issues and track the status.
- Proactively propose solutions or areas where the business case or relevant documentation can be strengthened. This can be both strengthening the case from a finance perspective (e.g., strengthen the business case from a metrics perspective by a better articulation of the impact to (e.g.) EEV, Operating Profit or Free Surplus Generation) or commercial perspective (e.g., strengthening the business rationale or impact of an initiative to top line growth).
- Work with the local and group Future Finance team on key initiatives regarding procurement and other improvements.
Job Requirements:
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, which includes the ability to communicate and bring across key messages to individuals with diverse cultural and educational backgrounds (i.e., actuaries, accountants, data experts, commercial teams and system and tech experts). At the same time translate key messages in a concise way and in layperson terminology to key stakeholders which are not close to the detail (e.g., able to summarize complex topics on one-pagers, balancing text, and visuals).
- A specialist in preparing business cases and bringing that through governance at a senior level. This requires an in depth understanding of the following:
- Process, governance and controls: the process, documentation and related governance and controls typically required to draft and get approval of a business case for commercial initiatives within a life insurer.
- Finance requirements: the metrics which are used within a life insurer to assess whether a project / initiative is worthwhile to pursue (e.g., EEV, IFRS Operating Profit, Free Surplus Generation).
- Soft skills: able to convince stakeholders through negotiation and influencing, of a point of view (either the business teams on a finance point of view or vice versa) on both senior and working level.
- CPA, Certified Actuary, MBA, or similar designation, with at least 10 years of post-qualification work experience, initially trained in a big four and subsequently worked within a life insurer.
- Has previous experience in working within both the finance function and business functions (e.g., distribution, customer, marketing, or similar departments), with experience in executing strategic and commercial initiatives, within a life insurer in Hong Kong.
- Deliver with the "Pruway" in mind, which means upholding core values through-out the change journey (i.e., 1 - Our customer is our compass: understand customer needs with empathy and act on that, 2 - We pursue our entrepreneurial spirit: explore opportunities, push boundaries and be resilient, 3 - We succeed together: collaborate as one team and break down silos, 4 -We respect and care for one another: be empathetic and respect differences and create a safe environment where everyone can be themselves and, 5 - we deliver on our commitments: we are accountable for our actions and execute with excellence and integrity).
- Bilingual (i.e., fluent in English and Cantonese).
Prudential is an equal opportunity employer. We provide equality of opportunity of benefits for all who apply and who perform work for our organisation irrespective of sex, race, age, ethnic origin, educational, social and cultural background, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, disability or part-time / fixed-term work, or any other status protected by applicable law. We encourage the same standards from our recruitment and third-party suppliers taking into account the context of grade, job and location. We also allow for reasonable adjustments to support people with individual physical or mental health requirements.