Director, Third-Party Management

Manulife • Waterloo, ON

2d • CA$125,100 - CA$175,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Third-Party Management leads the oversight, governance, and performance management of third-party suppliers, including claims administrators, health and specialty service vendors/partnerships. This role oversees all third party management, ensuring partners deliver high quality, compliant, and cost effective services that support the business and meet regulatory expectations. The Director will serve as a key leader in driving operational excellence, managing risk and strengthening third-party partnerships. With accountability for performance outcomes, this leader resolves issues, closes audit findings, and ensures third party controls remain robust and aligned with regulatory, contractual and risk requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business or related field.
• 7-10+ years of progressive experience in insurance, strategic partnerships, third-party governance/management.
• Strong leadership capabilities with proven ability to guide, develop, and enable high-performing teams.
• Proven ability to influence and collaborate across functions, including executive level partners.
• Strong communication, presentation and facilitation skills.
• Strong relationship-building skills and collaborative working style.
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex data and drive informed decisions.
• Knowledge of risk governance requirements and third-party oversight and performance management frameworks.
• Experience working in a large, complex, matrixed environment
• If the successful candidate is in Québec, proficiency in both languages will be required to support clients from various provinces outside of Quebec.

Responsibilities

• Lead, support, mentor, and develop a high-performing third-party management team.
• Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, high engagement and continuous improvement across internal teams and third-party partners.
• Set clear expectations and ensure strong execution across third-party contracting, governance, and third-party management activities.
• Provide guidance on complex third-party performance issues and risk issues.
• Promote and implement consistent best practices and knowledge sharing across the Strategic Partnerships team.
• Own and ensure adherence to end to end third party management workflows, including intake, due diligence, onboarding, inventory management, ongoing monitoring, annual third-party governance activities, change management, and offboarding.
• Partner with various Risk teams, Legal, Procurement, Operations, Finance, Distribution and other relevant teams to ensure consistent application of third-party processes across the business.
• Identify control gaps, process inefficiencies and drive remediation through process enhancements, tools, and governance reinforcement.
• Oversee third-party relationships to ensure they meet risk, governance frameworks and applicable Procurement standards and Third-Party Risk Management policies.
• Design and implement a third-party performance management framework, including best practices and continuous improvement initiatives (including AI, automation opportunities, etc.)
• Define and maintain KPIs, dashboards and reporting for leadership.
• Manage third-party management priorities and plans.
• Oversee end-to-end third-party performance monitoring, including contractual SLA monitoring, and overall contract compliance.
• Lead regular business reviews and performance assessments with third-party partners.
• Plan, execute and oversee all third-party audits and ensure timely and effective remediation of findings identified through audits and other performance monitoring mechanisms.
• Identify and mitigate operational, regulatory, and reputational risks associated with third-party services.
• Oversee third-party fee payments, claims funding, reconciliation & approval processes
• Act as the senior escalation point for complex third-party performance or risk issues and work with internal partners (Account Management, Legal various Risk teams, etc.) to address root causes and implement fixes.
• Provide actionable insights and recommendations to executive leaders.

Benefits

• health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans.
• various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources.
• generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director