AVP - New Business Underwriting

We are seeking an Assistant Vice President to lead, organize and manage the Regional Underwriting team, ensuring service delivery, strong governance, operational excellence, and customer outcomes. 

This role plays a critical leadership position in driving regional standardization, offshoring effectiveness, service quality, productivity improvements, and customer advocacy, while partnering closely with country operations, technology, risk, compliance, and business stakeholders.

1. Provide leadership oversight for the regional underwriting processing function, including but not limited to:
   • New business registration, assessment and processing
   • Underwriting administrative support such as data entry and amendment
   • Ensure service delivery meets agreed SLAs, turnaround times, quality standards and customer experience expectations across all supported markets.
      
2. Shared Services & Offshoring Governance
   • Drive the operating model for regional shared services, including, clear role demarcation between onshore and offshore teams, work allocation, capacity planning and productivity management and transition and migration of new business & CS underwriting processing activities into the shared service centre.
   • Ensure operational stability during transitions while maintaining service continuity and customer outcomes.
      
3. Standardisation & Process Excellence
   • Participate in regional process harmonisation and simplification initiatives to reduce variation across markets.
   • Ensure processes are performed in accordance with established Standard Operating Procedures, put in place control checkpoints and conduct quality checks on underwriting cases.
   • Identify & review opportunities for process improvement including digital enablement.
      
4. Risk, Compliance & Governance
   • Ensure strict adherence and compliance with local regulatory requirements across markets; Market conduct, fair dealing and customer protection standards; Internal risk, audit and governance frameworks
      
5. Performance Management & Reporting
   • Own regional performance metrics for underwriting functions, including productivity and cost efficiency; turnaround time and backlog management; quality scores and error rates; customer complaints and service recovery trends.
   • Prepare management dashboards, insights and updates for senior management, committees and governance forums.
      
6. Stakeholder & Country Engagement
   • Act as a key liaison between regional shared services and country operations.
   • Liaise with cross functional stakeholders (e.g., Distribution, Finance, Claims, IT) to resolve case issues, align requirements, and improve handoffs.
   • Support country-specific requirements while balancing regional efficiency and standardisation objectives.
      
7. People Leadership & Capability Building
   • Lead, coach and develop team leads and managers within the Underwriting shared services structure.
   • Build a strong culture of accountability, customer-centricity, and continuous improvement.
      
8. Customer Advocacy & Continuous Improvement
   • Champion customer advocacy within underwriting operations.
   • Use complaints data, feedback, and service insights to drive improvements in processes and communication.
   • Support service recovery and remediation strategies for complex or sensitive customer cases where required.

• University Degree
• At least 8 years of relevant experience in Underwriting, with at least 3 years in a supervisory or managerial role
• Strong communication, stakeholder management and decision making skills.
• Strong planning, organisation, problem-solving skills and ability to manage change
• Demonstrated experience managing service standards and operational risk.
• Sound judgment in handling sensitive customers cases
• Effective time management skills with the ability to prioritise tasks effectively
• Customer-centric and meticulous with the ability to work under pressure

• Champion and embody our Core Values in everyday tasks and interactions.
• Demonstrate high level of integrity and accountability.
• Take initiative to drive improvements and embrace change.
• Take accountability of business and regulatory compliance risks, implementing measures to mitigate them effectively.
• Keep abreast with industry trends, regulatory compliance, and emerging threats and technologies to understand and highlight potential concerns/ risks to safeguard our company proactively.

Founded in 1908, Great Eastern is a well-established market leader and trusted brand in Singapore and Malaysia. With over S$100 billion in assets and more than 16 million policyholders, including 12.5 million from government schemes, it provides insurance solutions to customers through three successful distribution channels – a tied agency force, bancassurance, and financial advisory firm Great Eastern Financial Advisers. The Group also operates in Indonesia and Brunei. The Great Eastern Life Assurance Company Limited and Great Eastern General Insurance Limited have been assigned the financial strength and counterparty credit ratings of "AA-" by S&P Global Ratings since 2010, one of the highest among Asian life insurance companies. Great Eastern's asset management subsidiary, Lion Global Investors Limited, is one of the leading asset management companies in Southeast Asia. Great Eastern is a subsidiary of OCBC, the longest established Singapore bank, formed in 1932. It is the second largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets and one of the world’s most highly-rated banks, with an Aa1 rating from Moody’s and AA- by both Fitch and S&P. Recognised for its financial strength and stability, OCBC is consistently ranked among the World’s Top 50 Safest Banks by Global Finance and has been named Best Managed Bank in Singapore by The Asian Banker.