PM – Operational Readiness Stream Lead

About the Position

We are seeking a Senior PM – Operational Readiness Stream Lead for VERDI Phase 4 in Belgium, responsible for ensuring operational readiness and successful migration of Classic Life and Unit-Linked portfolios.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end operational readiness of Athora Belgium for VERDI Phase 4.
• Ensure Operations and all impacted internal functions can safely administer, service, control, and support the migrated portfolios from Day 1.
• Convert migration, product, system, legal, risk, and finance changes into executable processes, trained and adequately staffed teams, controlled cutover activities, business-continuity arrangements, and a stable transition to Business as Usual.
• Protect policyholders, brokers, regulatory compliance, and agreed service levels.

Requirements

• Business Project Manager Senior
• Languages
  • Dutch: Professional working proficiency
  • French: Professional working proficiency
  • English: Full professional proficiency
• Skills
  • Cross-Functional Operational Readiness Leadership
  • Deep Expertise in Belgian Life Insurance Operations
  • Process, Control & Acceptance Design
  • Migration, Cutover & Hypercare Delivery Capability
  • Stakeholder, Governance & Executive Communication Mastery

Expected Role & Responsibilities

1. Planning & Governance

• Build and maintain the detailed readiness plan, milestones, dependencies, owners, and gates for each migration wave.
• Chair weekly stream governance and provide evidence-based status to Cross-Stream, validation, change-control, and Go/No-Go forums.
• Assess the operational impact of change requests and maintain decision traceability.

2. Operational Impact, Process & Control Design

• Lead end-to-end impact and gap assessments across Operations, Finance, IT, Legal/Compliance, Risk, Actuarial, and Customer Service.
• Translate other stream outputs (features/gaps) and historical data into executable processes and exception paths.
• Ensure procedures preserve policy terms, customer rights, audit trails, data protection, AML/sanctions, complaints handling, and legal declarations.
• Define KPIs, reconciliations, control points, maker-checker controls, and accountable process owners.

3. Requirements, Testing & Acceptance

• Provide operational requirements for migration, target-system behavior, documents, interfaces, reporting, access, and support tooling.
• Define operational scenarios and acceptance criteria; mobilize SMEs for Test support and dry runs.
• Ensure defects, data-quality exceptions, and reconciliation breaks have resolved or formally accepted operational mitigations.

4. People, Organization, Training & Change

• Design the target organization, RACI, capacity model, skill matrix, access profiles, and segregation of duties.
• Assess workload and staffing impacts, including manual processing, transition peaks, and hyper care demand.
• Own training-needs analysis, knowledge transfer, role-based curricula, user guides, and readiness attestations.
• Drive adoption and ensure teams understand the change, execution model, and support channels.

5. Cutover, Continuity & Hypercare

• Own the operational runbook and connect it to the integrated migration/cutover plan.
• Coordinate freeze windows, backlog management, TSA handoffs, staffing rosters, command-centre coverage, and Day-1 activation.
• Define fallback and manual workarounds for delays, instability, data defects, and unavailable calculations/documents.
• Lead hypercare, support incident triage, and stabilization until agreed exit criteria and BAU acceptance are achieved.

6. Risk, Compliance & Customer Protection

• Escalate blockers with quantified customer, regulatory, financial, SLA, and schedule impacts and a credible path to green.
• Ensure operations align with approved product/POG decisions and Onboarding outputs are operationally usable.
• Secure review and sign-off from COO/business owners and relevant Legal, Compliance, Risk, Finance, Actuarial, IT, and Data stakeholders.

7. Reporting, Resources & Vendors

• Report weekly RAG reporting on milestones, readiness indicators, risks, defects, training, staffing, and cutover.
• Track resource demand, availability, and budget implications and escalate capacity or skill gaps.
• Coordinate operational dependencies and knowledge transfer.

We Offer

• Competitive salary
• On-site work location in Brussels, Belgium
• Opportunity to work in a bilingual business environment

About the Company

Thank you for not contacting Athora directly. You can reach out to ProUnity via [email protected].

Do NOT try and contact the Hiring Manager directly please. It is not appreciated.

Only the applications that meet Athora’s predefined criteria (skills, work experience, language skills, and availability) in this job post will be considered. If the above is not respected, Athora and/or ProUnity reserves the right to reject the candidate.

In attachment you can find different annexes part of the Framework Agreement of Athora. When proposing (a) candidate(s) you confirm you accept the conditions being part of the Framework Agreement.