Portfolio Lead (Business Change) in London

The Portfolio Lead is accountable for establishing and running a mature, enterprise-wide portfolio management capability within the Pacific Life Re’s Business Change function, understanding how initiatives align to strategic priorities and ensuring they are delivered effectively. This role will enable the Executive Committee and senior leadership to make data-driven, prioritised, and strategically aligned investment decisions.

Reporting to the VP, Business Change, the role leads the development of the Project Portfolio pipeline for one or more Lines of Business or DBS (Divisional Business Services) Functions, delivering integrated portfolio insight, governance, evaluation and prioritisation of projects based on business value, organisational capacity, and risk. This role is critical in the evolution of the Business Change function within PL Re to a fully integrated, insight-led portfolio model.

• Act as a trusted advisor to various divisional leadership and senior stakeholders and Committees.
• Drive alignment across often competing priorities (LoBs, DBS Functions, Technology).
• Build strong relationships across Change, Finance, Strategy, Risk, and Technology.
• Provide clear, concise updates to leadership teams.

• Implement integrated planning processes across strategy, budgets, and delivery, ensuring pipeline demand is clearly communicated and agreed.
• Challenge and shape demand to ensure alignment with business priorities.
• Manage the intake, assessment, and prioritisation of change demand.

• Translate business strategy into a coherent and prioritised change pipelines, ensuring all initiatives are clearly linked to strategic objectives and value outcomes.
• Establish a clear portfolio taxonomy, definitions (e.g. BAU vs strategic change), and consistent lifecycle framework.
• Support investment planning, business case development, and funding decisions.
• Align portfolio processes with Finance, Strategy, Technology, Risk and other enabling functions.

• Manage and prioritise a portfolio of change initiatives aligned to business strategy.
• Create and maintain a single integrated view of the change portfolio (strategic initiatives, regulatory, BAU change).

• Help redefine the governance framework(s) for prioritising, sequencing, and occasionally pausing change initiatives based on capacity and combined business impact – with clear alignment with other Executive Committees.
• Strengthen governance to ensure transparency, auditability and alignment to strategy.
• Ensure clear visibility of delivery status, risks, issues, and interdependencies.
• Deliver forward-looking portfolio insights including: Delivery health and performance, Strategic alignment, Capacity and resource constraints, Interdependencies and risk hotspots.
• Drive consistency in delivery standards, methodologies, and documentation.
• Shift leadership conversations from project reporting to portfolio decision-making.

• Upskill the Business Change function and Business areas in portfolio thinking and disciplines.
• Embed consistent standards, tools, and ways of working.
• Continuous improvement: find ways to make Change more effective.

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in portfolio / transformation / change leadership within; Insurance (Life, Reinsurance preferred), or Financial Services (Banking, Asset Management).
• Proven track record of establishing or maturing Portfolio / Transformation Offices (PMO++, EPMO, Portfolio Office).
• Deep expertise and qualifications in: Portfolio management frameworks (e.g. MoP, P3O, enterprise PMO models), Investment prioritisation and business case evaluation, Portfolio analytics, reporting, and tools (e.g. Planview, Clarity, Power BI).
• Strong understanding of delivery methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, Hybrid).

• Strong Leadership Skills Including: Strong strategic thinking with ability to connect portfolio to business outcomes.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing at ExCo level.
• Ability to challenge constructively and facilitate difficult trade-off decisions.
• High credibility, resilience, and enterprise leadership presence.
• Data-driven mindset with ability to translate analysis into insight.
• Commercial awareness and value focus, with the ability to understand how change initiatives drive the right commercial outcomes and returns on investment.

Every person in our global team is valued for the unique qualities they bring to our business and we seek to build their expertise and support their individual ambitions at every step. Of course, we take our work seriously and we know our team can operate under great pressure. We work hard and thrive on achievement, but we also know how to have fun and relax too. We regularly host a range of team building days to strengthen our team’s connection with each other and reflect on their successes. Providing employees with a healthy work-life balance is very important to our culture. We have a wide range of employee benefits and we host regular social activities and well-being initiatives. We are also committed to supporting our employee’s involvement in their communities, by actively fundraising, hosting charity events and overseeing volunteering opportunities.

• 25 days of annual leave with option to buy/sell more days.
• Adoption and fertility leave.
• Generous enhanced parental leave.
• Comprehensive private insurance coverage for employee and dependents.
• Group Life Insurance coverage of 9x basic annual salary and Group Income Protection up to 75% of basic annual salary.
• Optical benefits.
• 15% combined employee/employer contributions.
• Subsidized gym membership.
• Access to Employee Assistance Program.
• Cycle to Work and Electric Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme.
• Time off for volunteering.
• Charitable matching of employee donations.

We are committed to a culture of diversity and inclusion that embraces the authenticity of all employees, partners and communities. We support all employees to thrive and achieve their fullest potential. As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we will provide reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process to ensure equal access to applicants with disabilities. Please contact us about your needs so that we can discuss these with you to make sure that suitable adjustments are made, where possible.

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