Head of Protection Product Development, Nordea Life

Job ID:  27263

We are looking for a  business development leader who will to join a company that has high ambitions for developing the protection product insurance business for future needs. This is a full time and permanent team leader position (Leading Others).

About our team

You will be leading a superb team of 8 experts called Protection Product Business Development (Business Design) which belongs to the new Protection Product Business unit within Nordea Life Assurance Finland. The team is located in Kaisaniemi, Helsinki. We have a wide range of business development initiatives that we work with. These include: sales, customer experience, digital development, and product development to name a few.

What we do:

• Drive protection product business development activities and projects 
• Develop and maintain protection products & services offered by Nordea Life & Nordea Insurance Finland (including the product governance & oversight system)
• Ensure that mandatory legal requirements are considered in products, services and ways of working
• Develop sales and customer experience (sales and customer oriented culture, measuring CX, considering CX in product development and innovation etc)
• Develop processes and ways of working including advancing the use of automation
• Advance the digitalization of our products and services, both in our own digital channels, as well as in the channels provided by Nordea

All of this work aims at providing solutions that are easy to sell, easy for customers to buy & care for and to meet and exceed customer needs and expectations while being also profitable, compliant and technically feasible. In order to succeed, we co-operate closely with other units in Nordea Life (Technology, Customer Service, Legal etc.), as well as with a wide range of teams in Nordea Bank. We aim high and work hard, but we also have a lot of fun together, which has been recognized by several awards in recent years.

You as a leader play a key role in developing and supporting your team members to reach their aspirations and unleash their full potential.

Collaboration. Ownership. Passion. Courage. These are the values that guide us in how we work and how we make decisions – and that we imagine you share with us.    

What you’ll be doing

Main responsibilities in this role:

• Lead a team that consist of 8 business development experts (project managers, business developers, product manager, product owners)
• Communicate how company strategy turns into tactical tasks and into practical actions
• Set direction for complex business development initiatives
• Enable your team members to succeed by setting relevant targets, providing regular feedback and helping them to solve obstacles where needed
• Develop current business development competences and identify which new competences we need to build in order to stay on the top of the game in future as well
• Find best practices and new opportunities to develop the ways of working for the Development Process in our company
• Foster great communication, transparency and cooperation with all stakeholders
• Encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing and the adoption of best practices

Who you are

This is the right role for you if are/have:

• Excellent leadership skills: you believe that a leader’s success is measured by how well their team performs. It is your passion to support you team members’ growth
• Able to lead transformation and to make things happen through others
• An excellent communicator and you are able to grasp complex things in a way that you can make others understand the key points quickly
• Known for having excellent co-operation skills
• The habit of staying on top of what the new trends, tools and ways of working are and you have the ability to evaluate what is relevant for the organization and what is not
• Proactive in finding areas that we should focus on and launching relevant initiatives but also persistent and pragmatic in finalizing them
• A strong expert in product-, service- and concept development of both life and non-life insurance products, and you also have strong abilities in understanding insurance sales & management based on customer needs

Your background and skills include:

• Practical experience in leading expert teams
• Experience in protection product insurance sales and business development (including experience in how changes are done to IT systems)
• Excellent English & Finnish skills, both in speaking and in writing (professional level)
• Relevant academic Master’s degree e.g. finance, economics or similar
• You also have at least basic knowledge on Lean, Agile, SAFe or corresponding issues

As the Leader you are expected to and have a crucial role in:

• Creating purpose by translating strategy into operational and actionable plans to showcase how we create value for our customers and impact business priorities
• Empowering people by identifying individual development opportunities to support growth and encourage them to share own ideas, concerns and learnings
• Driving performance by recognising individual contributions and collective victories to maintain a healthy balance through measurable goals and clear priorities for each team member
• Developing teams by nurturing a dynamic team culture, that emphasises trust and respect to ensure that everyone understands their unique value and contribution
• Fostering inclusion by creating equal opportunity through curiosity about all aspects of diversity in your team to evaluate habits and perspectives on a continuous basis

What we offer    

People come here when they want to get somewhere. For some, it’s to take their career to the next level. For others, it’s to break new ground within their area of expertise – in other words, with us, you will always move forward.

A culture that fosters performance and growth in one of the largest Nordic banks, offering various opportunities to evolve, develop and learn from brilliant colleagues with diverse backgrounds in a vibrant working environment.

Hybrid working model – we believe in the value of bringing people together and at the same time we embrace the freedom of flexibility.

Diversity and inclusion are a natural part of our daily work. We know that an inclusive workplace is a sustainable one. We genuinely believe that our diverse backgrounds, experiences, characteristics and traits make us stronger together. Every day we strive to find new ways to improve diversity and inclusion within our community e.g. we have signed the European Diversity Charters in the countries where we operate to show our commitment and engage with others to continue learning and improving.

If this sounds like you, please get in touch!

Next steps

Submit your application no later than 20/12/2024.  For more information, you’re welcome to contact CEO of Nordea Insurance Finland and Head of Sales Nordea Life Finland Ari Sivonen at [email protected], tel. +358 50 360 9520.

We enable dreams and aspirations for a greater good.

We build relationships. We add a personal touch to everything we do – when advising our customers, collaborating with colleagues, and meeting our potential candidates.

We learn and develop. We take pride in being experts and thinking ahead. We use our expertise to meet our customers’ needs, from the simplest to the most complex. We bring a growth mindset to our work that enables us to focus on a broader perspective in our daily challenges.

We lead change. We are responsible and aware of the impact of our decisions, both for our customers and for our local and global communities. Mindful of our responsibility towards current and future generations, we have made sustainability an integrated part of our business strategy.

We are Nordea. We have a 200-year history of supporting and growing the Nordic economies and our values are deeply rooted in these open, progressive and collaborative societies. As one of the biggest employers in the Nordics, Poland and Estonia, you have excellent opportunities to evolve, develop and move forward with us.