Annuity Business Strategic Finance Lead

MassMutual•Springfield, MA

23h

About The Position

The Annuity Business Strategic Finance Lead will work with business partners in Third-Party Distribution and New Markets (TPD&NM) and Corporate Finance to provide high quality information and analysis to facilitate assessment and reporting of business performance, identification of options and decision-making. This role will be critical to managing the newly established Annuity P&L, including distribution, new business and In-force profitability. The role reports to the Head of Strategic Finance – TPD&NM within FP&A, and will be working directly with distribution, product and pricing teams on a regular basis. As the Annuity Business Strategic Finance Lead, you’ll have an opportunity to contribute to helping our businesses grow and become more profitable. You will develop and maintain strong knowledge of products, markets, competitors and key industry metrics. You will utilize your understanding of the business’ challenges and priorities to help drive decision-making. You will partner across Finance to understand the financials, leveraging data platforms to identify key information that will help to tell the story. You will provide support to CFO customers on performance, opportunities for cost efficiencies, benchmarking comparisons, sales, profitability results and considerations for decision-making. You will contribute to engagement for change, innovation and value creation. In this role, you will join our TPD&NM Strategic Finance team primarily supporting our MassMutual Annuity and MMSD business, which manufactures and sells protection and annuity products. The Strategic Finance team is a collaborative team whose members demonstrate accountability, agility, a dedication to be inclusive, strong business acumen, and show courage, even in the most difficult situations. Highly effective communication and influencing skills are key to successful relationship-building and the ability to articulate the reasoning and bases for recommendations and conclusions are imperative. In addition, the ability to influence and challenge assumption in a matrixed organization will be essential. Our team demonstrates an inquisitive approach, asking probing questions to identify issues with specificity. As the Annuity Strategic Finance Lead your work will impact strategic decisions made by your business partners; enabling better strategic decisions utilizing the financial data and tools.

Requirements

10+ years experience in finance or actuarial
Experience using data and information to analyze and communicate (in writing, orally and visually) the implications of business unit activity, leveraging business intelligence applications (Alation, Microstrategy, SQL queries etc.)
Intellectual curiosity to continue learning and adding breadth and depth to understanding.
Demonstrated ability to partner with, challenge and influence senior business leaders and peers in using financial information and tools to identify options and make decisions across a matrixed organization
Excellent communication skills, including the ability to convey complex information in readily understandable terms
Exceptional relationship building and influencing skills
Proven ability to lead across a matrixed organization

Nice To Haves

FSA, CFA or MBA designation a plus
Knowledge of U.S. GAAP and statutory financial reporting requirements relating to annuity products a plus
Experience with financial forecasting and quarter closes
Ability to work well under pressure and manage multiple deliverables
Ability to lead and manage one or more direct reports

Responsibilities

Drive and Support Strategic Initiatives : Actively participate in driving business financial projects/initiatives.
Be a respected thought partner in the development and execution of strategies and initiatives to achieve the enterprise’s strategic aspirations and goals, including active, ongoing involvement in product development and pricing analytics
Lead the efforts to advance the Annuity P&L, including development of a Source of Earnings view: Insurance Margin, Investment Margin and Fee Margin.
Understand and actively influence the expense allocation process to ensure expenses supporting Annuity are representative of the business.
Review forecast and initiative assumptions and contribute to cost-benefit analyses to support decision making, including prioritization, in order to pursue the most beneficial initiatives and maximize benefits.
Inspire, lead and execute on CFO transformation initiatives, including data driven financial analysis, automated reporting, advanced analytics, data governance, and talent strategy.
Prepare high quality analysis to influence key financial decisions, including developing and employing analytical models. This analysis is also used both with the business and within CFO for management reporting and external reporting.
Contribute to the development of driver-based forecasts, reviewing and vetting P&L assumption elements and assessing overall reasonableness of earnings forecasts.
Ensure that key forecast business driver assumptions are developed in collaboration with business partners
Identify and monitor key performance drivers and risks with timely communications of trends and observations.
This supports decision making and internal management reporting and external reporting.
Develop Sales Forecast scenarios, in close partnership with MMSD, monitor and assess trends and leading indicators; be able to substantiate and evaluate sales trends
Analyze Margin, expenses, Pre-tax Operating Income (PTOI), AUM, unit costs, VNB, capital consumption and other financial business drivers, used by business partners and the CFO organization
Influence, lead and educate on financial-related elements of the strategic and tactical success of the businesses
Develop and maintain strong working relationships and collaborate with business partners and CFO co-workers to, among other outcomes, continuously improve CFO processes.
Use business acumen and communication skills to draft and contribute to commentary which enables readers to quickly understand why and how performance is impacting financial results.
Communicate complex information and analysis in clear, understandable terms with appropriate context, focused on actionable content.
Address and drive solutions for financial-related issues and opportunities, including influencing cross-functional actions and collaboration.