Head of Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution Strategic Finance

ABOUT CORPORATE FINANCE:
At MassMutual, we're passionate about helping millions of people find financial freedom and this passion has driven our approach to developing highly interactive digital experiences for our customers.
As a member of Corporate Finance, you'll have an opportunity to join an engaged team of professionals who provide high-quality analysis and advice to the enterprise's leadership team and actively support both growth and profitability.
The Team
This role will be an important member of the Strategic Finance Business Partner ("SFBP") team, a group comprised of financial and actuarial professionals aligned to our life insurance and annuity business channels, operations, technology, and other organizations. Analyses and information regarding key performance measures and sources and quality in relation to targets and benchmarks at the channel, subchannel and product levels are used in partnership with the client areas to inform decision making and support broad enterprise planning. Key regular topics include competitiveness, sales targets, performance against key metrics, and incentive plan targets.
SFBP team members are motivated by the opportunity to apply their knowledge, experience, and communication skills to influence the strategic direction and performance of their client areas and the enterprise as a whole.
The team shares best practices, approaches, and information weekly, working closely with all areas of Corporate Finance to bring holistic CFO support to clients, influence Corporate Finance priorities and communications, and maximize CFO efficiency and operational performance.
IMPACT
The Head of Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution Strategic Finance will work with executive management of Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution and CFO to provide high quality analysis and information to facilitate decision-making. The incumbent will report to the Head of Strategic Finance Business Partners, who reports to the CFO.
As the senior corporate finance executive working regularly with the senior management team of Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution, this role is responsible for leading the Corporate Finance work with Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution:• Lead matrixed teams that:
o prepare high quality financial analysis and information to influence important decisions. This includes regular reviews of key financial and business KPIs versus plan, trends to develop proactive and informed forecasts and contribute to the development of robust CBAs and measuring progress versus deal model.
o drive the development of Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution forecasts with a focus on material aspects of P&L and Balance Sheet impacts with clear documentation of basis for assumptions. Establish formal sign off on forecast and plan assumptions with Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution leaders.• Serve as the Senior finance partner for Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution leadership teams on the development and support of strategic plans, and short-term and long-term management goals and objectives, appropriately balancing finance partner and corporate stewardship responsibilities.• Be a respected thought partner in the development and execution of strategies and initiatives to achieve organizational aspirations, including active, ongoing involvement in pursuing the Strategic Planning and Delivery revenue enhancement and efficiency goals. This includes working to simplify financial processes, data flows and assignment and allocations of costs.• Drive business strategies and execution transparency and discipline related to wealth management retail broker-dealer, life, annuities, enhance B2B loan monitoring and controls, and mutual fund trends - including competitive landscape, and key industry metrics - which are used to assess performance vs. plan and prior trends.• Monitor financial performance drivers, risks, metrics and timely communicating trends and observations• Evolve reporting and current processes to modern approaches (e.g. dashboards with high quality financial analysis and insights) to facilitate important decisions, working with FP&A, Controllers, Actuarial, Corporate Strategy and others. This includes leading teams that develop financial story that is representative of factual performance and deep insights to drive decision support and track management action.• Liaise between Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution and the CFO organization, leveraging work done throughout CFO to provide holistic finance support to Brand, Product, and Affiliated Distribution and streamlining requests between finance and the business.• Improve transparency around leading indicators to improve financial performance of products and distribution trends - wealth management cash flows (inflows and outflows), Insurance (sales, loss ratio, retention rates, morality, claim frequency, conversion rates), Annuities (sales, new contracts, surrender rates, investment performance, Regulatory compliance, claims trends), Institutional products (Pension Risk Transfer, Funding agreements, Life insurance (COLI/BOLI), and Stable Value IO), and other MM Prop mutual funds, and Cash sweep (Flourish). Identify outliers, trends and influence optimal decision making.• Be a strong finance partner and leader contributing to the modernization of strategic finance organization - ability to work through ambiguity, strong communication and change management and mobilize matrixed team's around most important work. Partner with Center of Excellence to realize SFBP operating model.
LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES:• Develop and maintain strong working relationships with business, finance and corporate leaders, through regular value-add involvement in planning, strategy and team update meetings.• Communicate complex information and analysis in clear, simple and understandable terms with appropriate context, focused on actionable content.• Inspire, lead and execute on CFO finance transformation goals, including data-driven financial analysis, automated reporting, advanced analytics, developing staff and successors for key roles. Also, work to influence the culture, promoting self-service, collaboration, benchmarking and disciplined cost-benefit analyses• Create an environment that fosters a culture of innovation, empowerment and collaboration.• Actively champion the CFO division's work to attract, retain, and develop top-tier diverse talent.
QUALIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS:
Minimum:• Extensive (10+ years) experience with wealth management retail broker-dealer, life insurance, annuities and proprietary mutual funds• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to convey complex information in readily understandable terms.• Experience leading and developing high caliber teams• Must be authorized to work in the US without sponsorship now or in the future Exceptional relationship building and influencing skills• Demonstrated experience with creative problem-solving• Ability to work well under pressure and manage multiple deliverables
Ideal:• CPA or MBA strongly preferred• Prior experience supporting large distribution channel in Financial services (including Wealth Management)• Deep knowledge of U.S. GAAP, statutory financial reporting requirements relating to life insurance products• Ability to travel between Boston and Springfield regularly• Must be authorized to work in the US without sponsorship now or in the future
MassMutual is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer Minority/Female/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity/Individual with Disability/Protected Veteran. We welcome all persons to apply. Note: Veterans are welcome to apply, regardless of their discharge status.
If you need an accommodation to complete the application process, please contact us and share the specifics of the assistance you need.