Growth and Innovation Lead at Sanlam Group

What you will do

Supporting and enabling innovative growth across SPA Life’s businesses in Africa by acting as an advisor to these projects and by building and managing the tools and capabilities to support them. These initiatives will typically be enabled by external partnerships and/or technology use in selling mainly insurance products to clients across Africa.

Providing & enabling direct support to innovative growth projects

• Providing advisory support to businesses as they innovate, and to help them in working with partner organisations and technology companies.
• Coaching and acting as a soundboard for innovation project teams across the business.
• Supporting negotiations and contracting with partners and suppliers.
• Assessing the quality of innovation proposals, rating potential technology and other partners, identifying risk factors in new initiatives.

Acting as a central point of support & control for innovative growth

• Tracking and analysing the performance of innovation initiatives, and using this information to inform decisions at a local and group level.
• Securing and defending budgets for the right initiatives, and motivating for head office support for initiatives, engaging with colleagues at a senior level.
• Proactively finding and initiating new growth projects by recognising patterns or repeatable models across countries.
• Finding and connecting the right resources from the Sanlam Group or outside to fill gaps in the capabilities needed for projects.
• Monitoring and studying insurance and financial services innovation globally for context and inspiration, and to recognise trends.

Curating and improving the organisation’s innovation methods

• Acting as curator of the innovation framework and toolkit, and continually enhancing this supporting material, both through the experience of the businesses as they innovate, and through creating new and improving existing aspects of the framework as required.
• Identifying, articulating and communicating lessons learned from the experience of the teams worked with across Africa. Communication may be in presentation form, written, or person-to-person.

What will make you successful in this role?

• Appropriate Business related degree with 10 years’ relevant experience
• Work in a consulting or advisory role, dealing with ExCo level clients.
• Work in insurance, ideally with experience across several countries in Africa.
• Experience in innovating, creating new business models and/or value propositions.
• Managing a portfolio of projects across different locations.

Abilities

• Ability to work with staff up to CEO level across the continent.
• Strategic and analytical thinker, able to spot patterns and trends across different contexts.
• Familiarity with innovation and start-up models.
• Expertise in business model design and innovation.
• Understanding of insurance in emerging markets.
• Proficiency in French an advantage.

Attributes

• Strong interpersonal skills and gravitas to command respect at a senior level.
• Comfort with uncertainty, hypothesis driven projects, and a “test and learn” approach.
• Resilience to cope with setbacks and challenges in diverse environments.
• Willingness to pull the plug on unsuccessful initiatives.
• Ability to influence at all levels.

Qualification And Experience

• Degree or Diploma with 10 to 12 years related experience.

Knowledge And Skills

• Strategic Planning
• Trend Analysis
• Project Oversight
• Business Knowledge
• Innovation Management