Operational Readiness Stream Lead - Life Insurance Migration (Freelance possible)

MISSION DESCRIPTION & CONSULTING PROFILE

Description of The Mission

As Operational Readiness Stream Lead, you will drive the end-to-end readiness of a Belgian life-insurance migration programme. The objective is to ensure that Operations and all impacted internal functions can safely administer, service, control and support the migrated Classic Life and remaining Unit-Linked portfolios from Day 1.

The role translates migration, product, system, legal, risk and finance changes into executable processes, trained and adequately staffed teams, controlled cutover activities, business-continuity measures and a stable handover to business as usual, while safeguarding policyholders, brokers, regulatory compliance and agreed service levels.

Expected deliveries

• Approved operational readiness, including impact and gap assessment.
• Updated operational procedures and controls for policy servicing, premiums, commissions, claims and benefits, buybacks, disability covers, complaints, documents, AML and sanctions, and legal declarations.
• Operational requirements and acceptance criteria for testing, including mass-data testing and exception-handling requirements.
• Training and knowledge-transfer documentation, role-based curricula, user guides, attendance records and competency evidence.
• A change management plan covering stakeholder impact, deployment, adoption and support.
• An organisational set-up document defining the target operating model, RACI, capacity, skills, access rights and segregation of duties.
• An operational transition plan and runbook aligned with the integrated cutover plan.
• Business continuity, fallback and manual workaround plans.
• An operational readiness dashboard and evidence pack supporting business-owner sign-off and Go/No-Go decisions.
• A post-go-live hypercare, incident-support and controlled BAU handover model.

📋 Tasks and responsibilities

1. Planning & Governance

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

2. Operational Impact, Process & Control Design

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

3. Requirements, Testing & Acceptance

• Provide operational requirements for migration, target-system behaviour, documents, interfaces, reporting, access and support tooling.
• Define operational scenarios and acceptance criteria, and mobilise SMEs for test support and dry runs.
• Ensure defects, data-quality exceptions and reconciliation breaks are either resolved or covered by formally accepted operational mitigations.

4. People, Organization, Training & Change

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

5. Cutover, Continuity & Hypercare

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

6. Risk, Compliance & Customer Protection

• Escalate blockers with quantified customer, regulatory, financial, SLA and planning impact, together with a credible recovery path.
• Ensure operations align with approved product and governance decisions and that onboarding outputs are operationally usable.
• Secure review and sign-off from business owners and relevant Legal, Compliance, Risk, Finance, Actuarial, IT and Data stakeholders.

7. Reporting, Resources & Vendors

• Provide weekly RAG reporting on milestones, readiness indicators, risks, defects, training, staffing and cutover status.
• Track resource demand, availability and budget impact, and escalate capacity or capability gaps when needed.
• Coordinate operational dependencies and knowledge transfer with external parties where relevant.

📝 Your profile

Experience and seniority

• Senior-level experience in a comparable role, such as Senior Business Project Manager.
• Minimum 8 years of experience, including 3+ years leading operational readiness, transformation or migration delivery in insurance or financial services.

Essential expertise

• Cross-functional operational readiness leadership.
• Deep expertise in Belgian life insurance operations.
• Strong capability in migration, cutover and hypercare delivery.
• Process, control and acceptance design.
• Strong stakeholder management, governance and executive communication.

Knowledge

• Strong knowledge of Belgian life insurance operations, policy administration and customer and broker servicing.
• Solid understanding of Classic Life and Unit-Linked products, reserves, premiums, commissions, benefits, buybacks and disability coverage.
• Knowledge of Solvency II, IDD, GDPR, AML and sanctions, product governance, complaints handling and regulatory or legal reporting is a plus.
• Experience with portfolio and data migrations, cutover, hypercare, business continuity and BAU transition.
• Proficiency with hybrid delivery and tools such as MS Project, Azure DevOps, Excel, Teams, SharePoint and PPM or RAID tooling.

Competencies

• Proven leadership in cross-functional business readiness within insurance or financial services.
• Excellent planning, dependency, risk, issue, decision and action management skills.
• Ability to bring structure to ambiguity, challenge constructively and escalate with clear impact and recommendations.
• Experience designing operating models, RACI frameworks, capacity plans, training approaches, scorecards and Go/No-Go evidence.
• Strong cutover and incident-management skills, with a calm and decisive approach under pressure.
• Clear executive communication and effective workshop facilitation.

Mindset

• Customer- and policyholder-first, with a strong control and regulatory mindset.
• Hands-on, structured and delivery-focused, with ownership of outcomes.
• Proactive and transparent, able to detect weak signals early and drive pragmatic recovery paths.
• Collaborative, while still able to challenge business and technology stakeholders when needed.
• Detail-oriented, while keeping an end-to-end view of readiness and BAU sustainability.
• Resilient and comfortable working with changing priorities and incomplete information.

Languages
English plus Dutch and/or French; ability to operate effectively in Belgium's bilingual business environment.

💼 Offer

You will be part of a growing Belgian SME where initiative and personal development are encouraged. We will provide you with an enjoyable work environment with fun colleagues. We will work out a career plan with you, with attention and a budget for extra education/certification. You can count on an attractive salary, supplemented with extra-legal benefits, including a company car.
(Freelance is also possible)