Director, Canada Strategy

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization providing a diverse range of insurance, wealth and asset management solutions to individual and corporate Clients. The Canadian Business is Sun Life's largest with over $1B in earnings (~1/3 of all Sun Life Financial globally). We're a market leader across life, health and wealth in the Canadian Individual and Group marketplace.

The Canada Strategy Team has a mandate to work with senior executives across the business to surface, review and develop strategies to address strategic opportunities and issues facing the Canadian business. The team will have a small portfolio of strategy and transformation projects that they will lead the execution of in partnership with stakeholders from other areas of the business – effectively acting as an internal consulting team. In addition, the team has an accountability to drive the Strategic Planning process in coordination with our Finance team and our business units.

Reporting to the AVP Strategy, the successful candidate will be responsible for leading and delivering analysis, research, and recommendations on priority strategic questions for the Canadian Business, engaging executive stakeholders, and working collaboratively with both members of the strategy team and partners within the Business. Success in this role requires substantial problem-solving and analytical capabilities, strategic thinking and insight generation, and effective communication and relationship skills.

The role includes the following major accountabilities:

• Strategic Project Execution – Support the delivery of strategic projects, including workstream management, problem definition and structuring, collaboration and occasional leadership of cross-functional teams, providing updates, and timely execution of deliverables
• Problem Solving and Analytics - Conducting financial and strategic analysis, including employing strategic frameworks, interpreting analytical results, generating insights, and writing decks or reports to provide findings and recommendations
• Communication and Dissemination - Presenting results, and engaging partners in discussion on executing next steps and implementing the recommendations, as appropriate. Preparation and presentation of both formal presentations and informal updates on
  analysis/recommendations
  for senior management
• Sustaining a strategic community - Actively fostering connectivity, dialogue, and sharing of insights and capabilities across Sun Life Canada's various strategy teams and practitioners
• Strategic planning – Supporting execution of a high quality process across Canada to develop both Business Unit and an overall Canadian Strategic Plan annually to be delivered to the board

Specialized Knowledge/Skills

• Excellent oral and written communication, presentation skills, and strong interpersonal skills
• Strong conceptual and analytical problem solving skills, with a solid background structuring problems and hypotheses, working with data, conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis, interpreting and synthesizing results, and writing
  reports/presentations
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including ability to build and maintain relationships with business partners
• Strong results-oriented project management skills; able to prioritize and organize work effectively to deliver on tight timelines, with a high attention to details
• Background in strategy project delivery
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office products (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)

Education and Experience

• Minimum of 3-5 years relevant business experience, ideally with some experience in insurance or financial services; experience in/or knowledge of Sun Life's business would be an asset but not required
• 2+ years in top-tier management consulting or equivalent experience in a Corporate setting
• University degree in business or related discipline; MBA would be an asset
• Experience analyzing and solving complex business problems;
• Experience in financial analytics, including using modelling tools and techniques, would be an asset
• Experience in conducting in-depth secondary research, including collection and synthesis; some experience with primary research would be an asset

L'échelle du salaire de base est pour l'emplacement principal du poste affiché. Elle peut varier selon l'emplacement du candidat sélectionné et d'autres facteurs. En plus du salaire de base, les employés admissibles de la Sun Life participent à différents programmes de rémunération incitative, dont le montant octroyé est discrétionnaire et dépend du rendement de l'employé et de la compagnie. Certains postes de vente participent à des programmes de rémunération incitative basés sur les résultats de vente individuels ou de groupe.