Senior Executive Manager - Risk Management

The Senior Executive Manager – Risk Management will manage risk management practices across Bupa Arabia and oversee the principles underpinning a robust and continuous Risk Management Framework in line with the Boards’ Risk Appetite by designing, building and operating a robust foundation to identify and understand the current and emerging risks to Bupa Arabia and their potential consequences

Governance

• Enact risk management practices in Bupa Arabia in sync with the Board’s overall responsibility for the oversight of risk, ensuring risk management activities are embedded including a risk management strategy, governance policies and a risk assessment and reporting life cycle.
• Facilitate a robust risk management framework being embedded across Bupa Arabia by key functions.
• Support and contribute to Risk Committees established across Bupa Arabia to maintain leadership and provide sufficient oversight of risk and to challenge compliance across the Company.
• Partner with Bupa Arabia Risk Management Committee to play an active role in owning the whole Company’s risk profile and acting on risk themes holistically.

Risk Management

• Collaborate with Bupa Arabia Chief Executive Team to set a strong ‘’Tone from the Top’’ with regard to Risk Management and have accountabilities for facilitating and supporting a strong culture for risk management.
• Ensure that roles and responsibilities with respect to risk management are clearly defined according to the’’3 Lines of Defence’’ (LoD) model adopted by Bupa Arabia:
  • Advise and support 1st LoD in identifying, managing, owning and escalating risks as part of their day-to-day activities.
  • Sponsor 2nd LoD by advising, supporting and challenging the 1st LoD to ensure that risks that are taken on are understood and controlled.
  • Facilitate 3rd LoD (e.g. Internal Audit) enabling the provision of independent, objective assurance to the Board and Senior Management.
• Partner with Organization Development Department to ensure that all employees are given awareness sessions and guidance to ensure that they clearly understand their responsibilities within the 3 LoD model.
• Act as the Ambassador sponsoring decision making to be carried out in line with the delegated authority framework, and that Bupa Arabia employees are able to report incidents without fear of blame or retribution.

Risk Strategy & Appetite

• Develop and own Bupa Arabia’s risk strategy, ensuring it is consistent with delivery of business strategy over the business planning period and the expectations of stakeholders.
• Be responsible for formalization of Bupa Arabia Risk Appetite Framework, Risk Strategy and Statements in one document and reviewed on an annual basis.
• Champion the implementation of Risk Appetite Statements, as defined by the Board of Directors, ascertaining:
  • Alignment of key stakeholders in delivering the right customer outcomes in the here and now, while ensuring that financial and brand strength is upheld so that Bupa Arabia can continue to deliver on its purpose for the foreseeable future.
  • Guidance for directors (and others charged with governance) in leading the business and setting its direction and strategy.
  • Use of such statements as a framework for strategic decision-making (e.g. M&A), ensuring business plans are aligned with appetite, and for reporting of key risk exposures against appetite.
• Ensure that Risk Appetite Statements are supported by defined and measurable tolerances and limits against the risk categorisation model.
• Partner with Resilience & Information Risk Department to proactively manage and ensure that transferring insurable risks are aligned to Board and risk appetite with the aim of ensuring that insurable risks are retained (where permissible by law) or transferred in the most efficient, economic and commercial way.
• Regularly monitor performance against the tolerances and limits set by risk appetite and any breaches be escalated in line with governance procedures.
• Develop a comprehensive and well-supported process to identify and manage Bupa Arabia’s strategic risks by building effective links between risk management and key strategical activities.

Policies & Risk Management Lifecycle

• Partner with Corporate Governance Department ensuring that Bupa Arabia Enterprise policies are maintained, and define the key principles and requirements for how risk is managed in Bupa Arabia.
• Direct the implementation of policies, supported by clear communications, so all employees understand their respective roles and responsibilities in relation to each policy.
• Maintain and oversee Bupa Arabia Risk Categorisation model that provides a standard approach for classifying the universe of different types of risks faced by the Company in pursuit of its purpose.
• Review regularly the risk positions, risk management response/strategies, control effectiveness, monitor policy compliance and risk position against risk appetite & Key Risk Indicators (KRI) limits, and report in line with the policy management framework, and rectify on a timely basis.

Risk Management Framework

• Sponsor the adoption of a common Risk Management Framework across Bupa Arabia to support a consistent risk management approach. All the different areas of risk that Bupa Arabia is exposed to in the pursuit of its business objectives, are categorised using a standard risk categorisation model.
• Promote the use of common tools and techniques, as defined in the Risk Management Framework to identify, assess, manage, monitor and report on current and emerging risks.
• Produce, operationalize and maintain Risk Management Framework supporting components to define key activities that must be undertaken across Bupa Arabia to ensure risk is manage consistently:
  • Risk Appetite Framework, Policy Management Framework, Delegated Authority Framework, Emerging Risk Framework, Stress & Scenario Instructions, Operational Risk Incidents Framework, Operational Risk Quantification Methodology and ORSA Standard & Reporting Framework.
• Command and administer the development of Bupa Arabia system and tools as necessary to support the Risk Management Framework.

Incident Management

• Build the foundation and infrastructure for incidents to be identified, escalated and reported in a timely fashion via defined governance routes including executive management and the relevant committees, dependant on materiality and in line with the Critical Incident Policy.
• Advise on actions to take as appropriate to mitigate and manage financial, customer, regulatory and reputational impact from identified incidents, in coordination with the Compliance Department.
• Provide assurance that critical Incidents are managed and reported in line with the Critical Incident Policy.

Forward Looking Assessment

• Advocate conducting a Bupa Arabia wide Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) in line with the prevailing ORSA Standard.
• Direct Bupa Arabia’s ORSA conduct (or equivalent), in line with local regulatory requirements.
• Campaign regular stress and scenario testing (SST) exercises (in line with the ORSA Standard) to understand the vulnerabilities of the business to adverse events and ensure that appropriate capital is held and management actions formulated.
• Act as the guardian for operational risks quantification to measure exposure due to the failure of a key process, personnel or system or the occurrence of external events. Identified operational risk exposures should be assessed against the defined risk appetite exposures.
• Own the outputs of the ORSA and operational risk quantification exercise to ensure informed business decision making and capital planning.

Management of Insurable Risks

• Assist CRO with directing the activities of the Insurance team, provide advice and guidance as necessary.
• Lead the management of international and nation-wide Insurance programmes, ensuring compliance with prevailing rules and regulations, including taxes.
• Adhere to the Corporate Governance standards and the Risk Management Policy and all related risk analysis and investigation procedures flowing from such policies.
• Lead the annual risk funding/insurance programme and management of all the processes that flow from it.
• Assist with the management of the annual insurance renewal process, ensuring the collection of accurate risk exposure data, liaison with Bupa Arabia broker regarding consolidation/submission of the data to insurers, and appropriate allocation of insurance premium to branches and head offices.
• Direct appointed broker and BA Insurance Specialist, display leadership of the claim management strategy.
• Input to the bid process and commercial contract wordings with suppliers, to the M&A process and integration of acquired companies into the annual programme, and to Bupa Arabia projects.

Fraud Risk Management

• Design a robust Fraud Risk Management Framework in line with regulatory and risk management standards in order to enforce the zero tolerance approach against internal and external fraud & to continuously assess the framework.
• Facilitate with Legal Affairs Department to ensure the effectiveness of the design and implementation of the Speak Up program, as a fraud detective tool.
• Oversee investigations processes and report results with respect to fraud allegations, recommend remedial activities and reporting lessons learnt.
• Manage fraud incidents to support identification, escalation and reporting in a timely fashion via defined governance routes including executive management and the relevant committees.

• General understanding of risk factors affecting insurance companies, familiarity with risk-oriented regulations (e.g. Solvency II).
• Leadership skills, including ability to manage risk, compliance and control activities in a complex financial operation.
• Considerable knowledge and experience of best practice risk management and governance frameworks, methodologies, and emerging practice.
• Skilled communicator with the ability to influence and motivate others.
• Ability to exercise oversight over governance, risk, compliance and control arrangements, desirable in a complex financial operation.
• Problem-solving and decision-making skills, with the ability to analyze complex information to identify the key issue/action and drive resolution.
• Knowledge and understanding of risk control arrangements.
• Proven ability to oversee a number of risk types, ideally including credit, market, operational, investment, regulatory and strategic risk and specifically liquidity, concentration and counterparty risk.
• Knowledge of regulatory environment and key regulatory regimes.
• Understanding of the issues involved in running a business, including the key financial dynamics and drivers.
• Resilience, excellence orientated, planning and organizing skills, building relationships, managing conflict.
• Influencing and decision-making skillset, information monitoring, attention to detail, and analytical thinking, conceptualization.

Other Requirements

• University Degree. Master's Degree and/or Insurance degree is preferred
• Hold internationally accepted relevant certification
• Professional Certificate(s) in insurance is preferred