Assistant Vice President, GenAI Digital Platforms

About FWD Group

FWD Group is a pan-Asian life and health insurance business with more than 12 million customers across 10 markets, including some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world. The company was established in 2013 and is focused on changing the way people feel about insurance. FWD’s customer-led and digitally enabled approach aims to deliver innovative propositions, easy-to-understand products and a simpler insurance experience.

For more information, please visit www.fwd.com

PURPOSE

• The Group GenAI Digital Platforms team is responsible for identifying, defining, designing, developing and managing digital initiatives to fulfil business objectives related to Digital Platform experiences leveraging emerging GenAI technologies
• The AVP, Gen AI Platforms AI is a senior product management leadership role focused on the conception, design, and delivery of GenAI digital solutions at FWD. This position requires a blend of digital product management skills, technical acumen, leadership, and collaborative skills to lead assigned digital platform portfolios leveraging GenAI technologies.
• The Group Digital GenAI Platforms team operates across FWD Group to:
• Identify Generative AI initiatives across FWD business functions to deliver a digital competitor advantage and impact business metrics at scale
• Collaborate and support Business functions to drive digitalisation initiatives that leverages GenAI technologies that will exploit business opportunities, enhance digital maturity, position for competitor differentiation, lead platform design, provide platform management and support partner solutions.
• Design and lead platform development roadmaps and collaborate on solution design to achieve optimal business outcomes for GenAI Initiatives

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES             

Strategic Leadership

• Develop and execute a digital product strategy for GenAI digital platforms solutions that support key business functions (i.e. Distribution, Operations, Consumer commerce, Finance) and in alignment with the organisation's goals and vision.
• Drive innovation by identifying and implementing cutting-edge GenAI technologies to enhance digital platforms and artificial intelligence capabilities.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and Business Function leaders to ensure the integration of GenAI digital technologies into all aspects of the business that deliver impact and scale.
• This role will lead a team of product managers (digital) and be a key collaborator with Group business function leaders, digital leadership teams, Group Technology teams, country business teams, Digital delivery development teams, country technology teams, and functional country business leaders across the organisation to ensure the successful delivery of Gen AI projects that align with our strategic objectives, digital experience, and operational needs.

Design

• Provide thought leadership on GenAI Digital solutions that are empathetic to customer-led outcomes to develop the next generation of digital platforms at FWD to disrupt the insurance sector.
• Lead and execute on digital platform design, with the UXUI design team through extracting business priorities, customer insights, data insights and fulfilling business needs
• Lead and scope platforms are planned to support digital platforms scalability, reliability and efficiency.
• Provide leadership and guidance on best practice Agile practices through the project delivery process.
• Translate FWD business strategy to digital strategy, policies and governance portfolio to ensure seamless execution and implementation of Gen AI use cases.

Development

• Be a key leader and collaborator as a partner with technology solutions delivery and business functional teams to embed technologies to support business efficiencies
• Communicate and partner with stakeholders to manage platforms roadmaps alongside target business goals.
• Plan and support budget plans for responsible platforms and approvals for implementation and operationalisation.

Team & Operations

• Responsible for ensuring co-ordinating design process flows with the requirements gathering, and development plans with senior executive stakeholders, business function leaders and technology & digital solutions delivery teams.
• Lead and execute the plans supporting the operationalisation of the responsible platform capabilities aligning with team best practices, and consistent with company business goals.
• Lead and support the execution of Gen AI awareness, culture building and insights extraction programs with all BUs in populating the Gen AI use case pipeline, as well as the prioritisation and iterative development of the Gen AI ideas.
• A Key contributor to the development of the FWD’s long-term Generative AI strategy, aligning it with the overall business objectives to ensure competitive advantage and innovation in products and services.
• Stay abreast and sharing thought leadership of cutting-edge developments in the field of Generative AI, ensuring FWD is leveraging the most advanced technologies and methodologies to solve complex problems and create value.
• Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of GenAI Product Managers, fostering a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous learning.
• Be a key leader in the ethical implications of Generative AI projects, ensuring compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements and addressing potential risks associated with AI technologies.
• Lead and nurture strategic partnerships with technology providers, academic institutions, and industry groups to enhance the organization's capabilities and influence in the Generative AI space.
• Guide the integration of Generative AI technologies into FWD Digital Products and services, ensuring they meet customer needs and exceed customer and market expectations.
• Manage budgeting and resource allocation for their respective teams’ Gen AI projects, ensuring the efficient use of resources and the maximisation of return on investment.
• Coordinate with product and project management teams to align Gen AI technical delivery timelines with business needs and objectives.
• Track and monitor the business impact and effectiveness and impact towards the digital Gen AI initiatives.
• Contribute to the decisioning on core GenAI Architecture and Gen AI solution applications that is best suited for the portfolio specific GenAI digital platform
• Responsible for managing development and infrastructure costs and analysis with the purpose of pursuing for efficiency in development and running costs of Gen AI software and hardware.
• Accountable to maintain and comprehensive understanding of the multi facets and disciplines that underly the success of the Gen AI Digital Platforms and systems being delivered. This will require an underlying understanding of business principles, related to the digital solutions, regulatory compliance, and data security compliance.
• Work closely with the other Digital Platform Portfolio leads, to manage and align with the preferred digital platform delivery approach
• Plan for future proofing through anticipation of the intersection of technology advancements, evolving customer preferences, and business outcomes to ensure our platforms are positioned for the future
• Demonstrate strong business acumen, alignment with business strategy, and be competent to make data driven decisions to support strong understanding and decisions.
• Lead, coach and mentor a team of Product (Platform) Managers so that they grow in digital product excellence and strategic thought leadership.
• Support the determination of the viability of new digital Gen AI initiatives, identify the product and high-level technical requirements, resource constraints, provide possible options/solutions to execute new ideas, and ensure a project is technically and operationally feasible as well as economically justifiable while mitigating risk
• Define and implement metrics to measure platform technical progress against performance and business objectives.
• Demonstrate digital experience thought leadership, business acumen, technical acumen, change management and strategic thinking proficiencies

QUALIFICATIONS / EXPERIENCE

• University degree in Business, or Information Technology or equivalent, circa 10+ years working experience in Financial Services, eCommerce / Insurtech-Fintech / Start-up environment, while not mandatory, will be advantageous. Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, AI, Machine Learning, or a related field preferred.
• Prior experience in managing cross-functional, multi-geography digital initiatives.
• Experience in Generative AI technologies and frameworks, with hands-on experience in implementing scalable GenAI solutions.
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to manage high-performing technical teams across multiple disciplines.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, capable of working effectively with cross-functional teams and senior leadership.
• Expertise in digital best practices and its applicability to lifestyle and financial services

KNOWLEDGE & TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Good understanding of Generative AI models, LLM related tools and techniques, prompt engineering, general architectural considerations that apply to GenAI digital solutions.
• Understanding of the principles behind LLMs, including architecture, training methodologies (e.g., supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement learning), and the nuances of transformer models
• Experience and knowledge in design and development of GenAI frameworks and components (LLMS, RAG, Fine Tuning, Prompt Engineering) with high volumes of data 
• Familiarity with the latest research and trends in the field of Gen AI.
• Creativity in leveraging LLMs to develop innovative applications, such as automated customer service chatbots, policy document generation, and personalized customer communication, that enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency.
• Comprehensive knowledge of the Software Development Life Cycle methodologies, including Agile and DevOps practices, as well as Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, tailored to AI development.
• Experience in managing platform that leverages cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) especially those related to GenAI
• Proven of experience in designing, building, and releasing native apps and web applications
• Strong relationship management skills, particularly in building and communicating & delivering messages to senior leadership

Following skills and knowledge are highly preferred:

• Knowledge of ethical AI use, bias mitigation, and AI governance frameworks to ensure responsible AI development and deployment.
• Security and Compliance: Awareness of cybersecurity principles, data privacy laws, and insurance/financial services compliance standards relevant to AI implementations.
• General knowledge of the processes involved in training LLMs from scratch, as well as fine-tuning pre-trained models for specific applications or domains, considering aspects like dataset preparation, model selection, and hyperparameter optimization.
• Understanding of NLP techniques and challenges, including text generation, sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, and language translation, as they apply to LLMs.
• Awareness of the ethical considerations and potential biases in LLMs, including strategies for bias detection and mitigation, and ensuring fairness and transparency in model outputs.
• Understanding of regulatory considerations specific to LLM applications, particularly in sensitive areas such as data privacy, intellectual property, and content generation.
• Model Evaluation and Testing: Skill in evaluating LLM performance using appropriate metrics and tests, ensuring models meet accuracy, relevance, and coherence standards for their intended applications.
• Ability to customize LLMs for domain-specific requirements in the insurance industry, enhancing their ability to understand and generate industry-specific content accurately.
• Proficient understanding of API solutions and optimisation within the solutions architecture for improved experiences
• Proficient in data analysis and applying insights into tangible outcomes that improve relevant business performances
• Familiarity with Security, Accessibility, Site Speed optimization, Cross-browser /Cross-platform UX Design is desirable