RS&AM Project Manager in Edinburgh

Job Type: Permanent

Closing Date: 10th November

Location: Edinburgh

Salary and benefits: Up to £97,000 dependant on experience, discretionary bonus, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more!

Flexible working: All roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process.

Who are we? We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures.

The Role: This role will report into the Head of PIO Transformation but will work closely with the Head of Policyholder Operations and their SLT, wider PIO stakeholders and other functions across Standard Life Group and third parties, to deliver the Project outcomes. Both the ability to manage complex and potentially competing priorities and excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills will be critical to being successful in this role. You will have experience of building and running multi-disciplined, cross-functional business and change teams, managing initiatives with several projects and workstreams. Strong knowledge of the policyholder asset processes, investment operations, data, reporting, trading and fund-related change is essential as is a detailed understanding of the broader securities services landscape especially custody & fund accounting.

Key responsibilities: As Project Manager you will be responsible for delivery on behalf of the executive sponsor and will act as the primary contact for the executives and other key stakeholders in relation to the PIO outcomes. You will:

• Work closely with the Executive Sponsor and colleagues to translate PIO strategic objectives into actionable plans.
• Undertake a leadership role to ensure that the project team remains focussed on the core business outcomes and benefits aligned to the Retirement Solutions and Asset Management workstreams of project migration.
• Work collaboratively with delivery team leads across Standard Life and external partners.
• Lead on all aspects of the PIO workstream of project migration, including shaping, approach/planning, and driving day-to-day delivery (including risk management elements) to make sure core objectives / required business outcomes are achieved.
• Work closely with the Head of PIO Transformation and other change teams to ensure efficient resource allocation and project execution.
• Work closely with the RS & AM Finance team on all financial matters (budgeting, forecasting, and reporting).
• Effectively manage strategic business partners / third party providers, working with other teams as required.
• Be responsible for project governance and reporting, chairing relevant forums and providing MI as required, including updates to Boards and Committees (where required).
• Work closely with the three lines of defence on risk management and assurance aspects.
• Define and provide appropriate MI on progress versus the roadmap into the relevant governance forums and ensure clear communication of the roadmap to interested stakeholders (internal and external).

What we're looking for:

Essential:

• An experienced Project Manager with a career history that includes leading large scale project teams and Integrations or a similar management role; a track record of delivering complex, high quality and customer focussed transformation.
• Significant experience within Financial Services / Retirement Solutions and Asset Management, including investment operations and policyholder asset-related change.
• Essential Policyholder Investment Office (PIO) knowledge, including policyholder investment processes, Fund Accounting, governance, data, reporting, trading and fund operations.
• Investment operations acumen and experience, with the ability to understand operational impacts, dependencies, risks and controls across PIO-related change.
• Experience of supplier onboarding / offboarding within a securities service / operations environment.
• Ability to manage multiple stakeholders (all levels) and threads of work under pressure.
• Analytical skills to evaluate project performance and initiate corrective actions.
• Strong financial acumen, budgeting, and forecasting.
• Strong risk and issue management skills.
• Strong people skills (including leadership, communication, influence, negotiation).
• Experience of project methodologies (including waterfall, hybrid and agile) and tools.
• Experience of working with and presenting project-related activity to the UK financial services regulators (ie. PRA & FCA).

Desirable:

• Investment / Asset Management qualifications.
• Professional Change qualifications.
• Agile Practitioner.
• Fund Accounting background especially Unit Linked / unitised and non-unitised funds.

Personal Attribute:

• Customer focused with an attitude to deliver excellent customer outcomes through change expertise.
• Demonstrated ability to lead virtual teams in a challenging and pressured environment.
• Ability to operate at all levels of the business and in a cross-functional and multidisciplinary environment.
• Problem solving, analytics and resolution skills.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong inter-personal and collaboration skills.
• Ability for personal growth and to make time for self-development.

We want to hire the whole version of you. We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you. If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best. We’re reviewing applications as they come in, so apply early to avoid missing out.