To lead the integration of product design into the business units strategic planning, platform architecture, and delivery to drive scalability and speed to market across Africa. Champion the central product strategy across both Corporate and Retail, ensuring solutions are innovative, customer-relevant, and locally responsive, while remaining aligned to overall Group strategy.
Requirements
Experience and Qualifications
- Bachelors degree in Commerce, Business, Actuarial Science, or a related field (Essential)
- Postgraduate qualification in Strategy, Product Development, Innovation, or related disciplines (Desirable)
- 10+ years in financial services, with proven exposure across corporate and retail product environments
- Demonstrated success in managing both Corporate and Retail product portfolios
- Experience leading product strategy and delivery across multiple countries and market segments
- Proven capability in digital product development and platform integration
- Track record of embedding governance practices aligned with risk, compliance, and actuarial guidance
- Experience developing and leading diverse, high-performing product teams
PROCESS
- Define and drive the product vision and roadmap in alignment with business units strategy, customer needs, and market opportunities.
- Lead the end-to-end product lifecycle, including concept development, market research, pricing, positioning, go-to-market strategy, and post-launch performance evaluation.
- Leverage market intelligence, competitor analysis, and customer insights to identify gaps, inform prioritisation, and shape product decisions.
- Champion platform-based product design to enable modular, scalable, and reusable solutions across the portfolio.
- Translate product strategies into executable delivery plans, overseeing frameworks and ensuring that cross-functional leads execute effectively from ideation through to launch.
- Champion a client-centric mindset across all products, ensuring the portfolio anticipates customer needs, delivers seamless experiences, and remains relevant and competitive over time.
- Ensure cross-functional alignment and governance for effective product enablement, driving clarity in ownership, accountability, and execution.
- Foster a culture of innovation, embedding customer feedback, market intelligence, and competitive insights into product development to deliver practical, high-impact, and future-fit solutions.
- Maintain oversight of compliance and governance, ensuring all products meet internal frameworks, regulatory requirements, actuarial standards, and enterprise risk expectations.
- Lead and mentor the Heads of Product for Corporate and Retail, fostering a culture of high performance, collaboration, and strategic alignment across teams.
- Build and sustain an inclusive, innovative team culture that embeds accountability, shared ownership, and continuous improvement in day-to-day product delivery.
- Drive capability-building efforts, supporting talent development, succession planning, and long-term functional resilience within the product organisation.
- Manage the product functions budget, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities, tracking return on investment, and optimising resource allocation across initiatives.
- Own portfolio-level profitability and performance oversight across both Corporate and Retail.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with internal partners (e.g., Finance, Legal, IT, Distribution) to ensure product strategies are aligned, integrated, and executable.
- Engage with external stakeholders to shape market relevance, strengthen partnerships, and elevate the brands product leadership position.
- Align stakeholders across geographies to drive commitment toward shared product goals and strategic prioritisation.
