Careers at Discovery Limited

Key Purpose

• The Key Account Manager is responsible for managing a portfolio of large, complex and/or strategically important employer schemes and broker relationships. The role is focused on strategic account ownership, retention, growth, and long‑term partnership development, positioning Discovery as a trusted advisor and preferred employee benefits partner.
• The Key Account Manager provides senior‑level oversight across servicing, renewals, and client engagement, driving proactive interventions, identifying growth opportunities, and ensuring a consistently high‑quality client experience across the full value chain.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

• Manage and own a portfolio of large, complex and/or high‑value employer schemes in line with the Account Management segmentation model.
• Act as the senior relationship owner for key brokers and employers, building trusted, long‑term partnerships.
• Develop, execute, and maintain strategic account plans, including retention strategies, growth opportunities, and engagement roadmaps.
• Proactively manage scheme risk, renewals, benefit enhancements, and escalations, ensuring early identification and mitigation of potential issues.
• Lead and oversee complex queries and escalations, coordinating across Client Relationship Partners (CRPs), operational teams, and specialist functions.
• Deliver high‑quality, insight‑driven reporting, analysis, and recommendations to brokers and employers.
• Facilitate and lead strategic client and broker engagements, including quarterly and annual reviews, workshops, and executive‑level discussions.
• Play a key role in client retention and growth initiatives, including cross‑sell and upsell opportunities across the CEB value proposition.
• Partner closely with Business Integration, Analytics, Actuarial, Technical Marketing, and Operations teams to deliver integrated, value‑adding solutions.
• Provide guidance, coaching, and support to Account Managers and Junior Account Managers where required.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of account management frameworks, processes, and service models.
• Maintain strong awareness of industry trends, regulatory developments, and market dynamics impacting clients and schemes.

Personal Attributes

• Highly developed relationship‑building and stakeholder management skills
• Strong strategic thinking and commercial acumen
• Confident, credible communicator at senior and executive levels
• Proactive, solutions‑focused, and outcome driven
• High level of accountability and ownership
• Ability to manage complexity, ambiguity, and competing priorities
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills
• Mentorship mindset with the ability to lead through influence
• Resilient and adaptable in a fast‑paced environment

Education and Experience

• Matric (required)
• Relevant tertiary qualification (advantageous)
• 5+ years’ experience in:
• Account management, client relationship management, or employee benefits consulting
• Strong experience in Employee Benefits (Group Risk and/or Umbrella Funds), including complex schemes
• Proven track record of managing senior broker and employer relationships
• Demonstrated experience in retention, renewals, and strategic account planning
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
• Experience working with CRM, reporting, and analytics tools (advantageous)
   

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Key Purpose

• The role has multiple facets, the first being to become completely familiar with existing software models to maintain and enhance them. Equally important is the development of new software models and functionality for the team.
• A less challenging but equally important role is running the software programs on a daily and monthly basis – these are called production runs. The programs that need to be run include software developed in-house as well as third party software. For all these, the  input files need to be created, usually by means of C/C++ programs, SQL and shell scripting. Some of these input files themselves can be complex in nature, being created of data from multiple sources.
• Running these production runs can involve working outside of office hours, for which time off is granted in lieu of overtime pay. Finally a requirement is to develop ad-hoc programs and front-ends for the team to be able to run various programs themselves – usually through a web page.
• It is important for the candidate to be able to work on their own to solve various technical challenges that may arise. Thought must be given to the latest  and future  technologies and methodologies that may better address these challenges. Although C/C++ has traditionally been used for its superior performance, an open mind must be kept to using the correct technology to address current and future requirements.
• Although guidance will be provided at the beginning, the candidate must work towards being able to make decisions on their own. To this end, a good understanding must be gained of the basic clinical principles, such as clinical coding, that are instrumental in all software developed and run by the team. It is also expected of the candidate to keep current with new developments in software and modelling techniques

Areas of responsibility include but may not be limited to 

• Maintaining and enhancing existing software
• Developing new software
• Creating input files
• Collating output from the various programs for loading into a database
• Running or assisting with production runs
• Developing simple front-ends (usually web-pages) to enable the team to run the programs themselves on a single record basis
• Keeping third party software up to date by updating license keys etc.
• Developing ad-hoc programs and scripts as required by the team
• Investigating new technologies and methodologies to keep the software current.

Personal Attributes and Skills - high proficiency required 

• High proficiency in C/C++ and Python
• A good knowledge of SQL and relational databases
• Proficiency in Unix/Linux shell scripting.
• Good knowledge of Unix/Linux
• Technical computer knowledge – e.g. using shared memory, binary files etc.
• Must be able to work unsupervised (mentorship is provided)
• Enthusiasm and willingness to learn 

Personal Attributes and Skills – proficiency required

• Unix/Linux command-line experience
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Office products; MS-Word, MS-Excel
• Working with a source-level debugger (for C) and IDE for Python
• ProC (Oracle’s SQL interface for C)
• XML / XSLT
• HTML / CSS
• PHP
• Java/Javascript
• Any other web technologies such as APIs

Education and Experience – minimum 

• Computer-related tertiary qualification – or minimum 5 years’ experience working in a highly technical environment
• Minimum 5 years’ Python and C or C++ programming experience
• Minimum 5 years’ experience software deployment in a Unix/Linux environment.
• Minimum 3 years’ SQL experience
• 2 years shell scripting (knowledge of awk or perl advantageous)
• 1 year HTML programming exposure
• 1 year XML/XSLT programming exposure
• 6 months PHP programming
• 2 years working with MS-Excel, MS-Word etc.