We are seeking a strategic, collaborative and product-minded leader to join our team as Assistant Vice President (AVP), Enterprise Digital Capabilities. This role is a key leader in Manulife's multi-year transformation to modernize and converge our digital ecosystem across Canada, the US, Asia and Global Wealth & Asset Management.
At the heart of this role is a simple objective: identify what is common across our digital experiences, build it once as an enterprise capability, and enable markets and segments to reuse and extend it to accelerate their own digital roadmaps.
Manulife has established a strong portfolio of reusable enterprise digital capabilities that support our Digital Storefront transformation and broader unification ambitions. The next opportunity is to expand and scale this portfolio to accelerate the unification strategies and roadmaps of our segments and advance One Manulife experiences across the enterprise. The AVP will lead this evolution – working across segments to identify where common capabilities can create the greatest incremental value, bringing together requirements to ensure capabilities are designed for enterprise reuse, defining adoption and rollout strategies, and establishing a federated model where capabilities can be developed globally or contributed by segments and scaled for broader enterprise benefit.
The AVP will own the strategy and evolution of this portfolio - identifying new opportunities for reuse, prioritizing investment, establishing strong product management disciplines, driving adoption, optimizing existing capabilities and ensuring that each enterprise investment continues to deliver measurable value.
A critical part of the role is leading the Common Capability Collective, bringing together digital and product leaders from across the enterprise to identify common needs, align roadmaps, determine where enterprise investment can eliminate duplication and accelerate delivery, and create a shared view of capability priorities.
This is an enablement role, not ownership of individual market or segment experiences. The AVP will partner closely with Digital Storefront and segment digital leaders to understand their roadmaps and determine how enterprise capabilities can help them deliver faster, with greater quality, consistency and efficiency.
The AVP will operate in a two-in-a-box partnership with a complementary Global Technology leader, jointly shaping the business and technology evolution of enterprise digital capabilities. Together, they will ensure capabilities are scalable, secure, reusable, well-integrated and designed for long-term enterprise value.
Position Responsibilities
Enterprise Capability Strategy & Portfolio
- Own the strategy, roadmap and ongoing evolution of Manulife's portfolio of reusable enterprise digital capabilities.
- Establish a clear view of the capabilities required to support digital convergence across markets, segments and channels.
- Continuously identify common business and customer needs that can be solved once and reused across the enterprise.
- Assess existing segment capabilities for opportunities to scale them globally rather than rebuilding equivalent solutions.
- Prioritize enterprise investment based on customer value, segment demand, reuse potential, strategic alignment and economic benefit.
- Maintain a multi-year capability roadmap aligned to Digital Storefront, segment roadmaps and Manulife's broader digital strategy.
- Ensure the portfolio remains focused and sustainable by rationalizing overlapping capabilities, technology and licenses where appropriate.
Common Capability Collective & Federated Leadership
- Lead the Common Capability Collective, bringing together Digital Storefront and product leaders from across the enterprise to jointly shape capability priorities and investment.
- Create transparency across segment roadmaps to identify shared needs, opportunities for reuse and potential duplication before investment occurs.
- Establish a federated model that enables capabilities to originate within segments where appropriate and subsequently evolve into reusable enterprise capabilities.
- Build alignment around enterprise standards and shared capabilities while preserving segment accountability for their own customer experiences and business outcomes.
- Create clear decision rights, funding principles, ownership models and governance for the creation and evolution of common capabilities.
Product Management & Capability Evolution
- Establish strong product management disciplines across the enterprise capability portfolio, including product vision, roadmaps, adoption, performance measurement and lifecycle management.
- Ensure every capability has clear customer and business outcomes, ownership, success measures and an evolution roadmap.
- Use segment feedback, performance data and emerging customer needs to continuously improve capabilities.
- Drive adoption and reuse across markets and segments, ensuring enterprise investments translate into meaningful acceleration of local roadmaps.
- Ensure capabilities are designed for extensibility so segments can meet differentiated market needs without unnecessarily duplicating core functionality.
- Manage capabilities through their full lifecycle, including investment, enhancement, optimization, consolidation and retirement.
AI Enablement & Optimization
- Establish an AI-by-default approach to the development and evolution of enterprise digital capabilities.
- Identify opportunities to embed AI directly into capabilities to improve customer experiences, decisioning, personalization and digital effectiveness.
- Apply AI and automation across the capability lifecycle to accelerate development, testing, implementation, operations and ongoing optimization.
- Partner with Technology and enterprise AI teams to identify emerging AI capabilities that can be productized and reused across the organization.
- Continuously evaluate opportunities to reduce manual effort, improve quality and accelerate time to market through AI-enabled capabilities and ways of working.
Enterprise Integration & Technology Partnership
- Co-lead the enterprise capability portfolio in close partnership with Global Technology through a two-in-a-box leadership model.
- Define business requirements and product priorities while partnering with Technology on architecture, engineering, security, scalability and technical lifecycle management.
- Ensure enterprise capabilities are designed to integrate effectively across Manulife's digital ecosystem and can be consumed by multiple platforms, markets and channels.
- Promote API-enabled, modular and reusable approaches that reduce point-to-point solutions and technology duplication.
- Ensure platform and technology decisions support long-term reuse, interoperability and enterprise scale.
Business Value & Benefits Realization
- Establish a clear value proposition and business case for enterprise digital capabilities and the overall portfolio.
- Quantify and track the value generated through reuse, including delivery acceleration, avoided duplicate investment, license consolidation, operational efficiency, improved customer experience and reduced ongoing support costs.
- Demonstrate how building once and reusing at scale compounds speed, quality and efficiency with every additional implementation.
- Partner with Global Marketing Strategy, FP&A, Technology and segment teams to track expected and realized benefits.
- Use adoption, utilization, performance and financial data to inform ongoing investment and portfolio decisions.
Adoption & Enterprise Enablement
- Partner with segment digital leaders to understand upcoming priorities and proactively identify enterprise capabilities that can accelerate their roadmaps.
- Establish clear onboarding, documentation, implementation patterns and support models that make enterprise capabilities easy for teams to adopt.
- Build awareness and understanding of available capabilities across the organization to increase reuse and prevent unnecessary reinvention.
- Create feedback loops with consuming teams so capabilities continue to evolve based on real implementation and customer needs.
- Champion a culture of reuse and enterprise thinking while recognizing the differentiated needs of individual markets and businesses.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Digital, Technology, Marketing or a related discipline; MBA or master's degree preferred.
- 10+ years of experience in digital product management, digital transformation, enterprise capabilities, platforms or related leadership roles.
- Demonstrated experience building and scaling reusable digital products, platforms or capabilities across a complex, federated organization.
- Strong understanding of modern digital ecosystems, including APIs, cloud platforms, identity, personalization, search, content, data, analytics, experimentation and customer experience technologies.
- Experience establishing product management disciplines and managing a portfolio of digital products or capabilities through their lifecycle.
- Demonstrated ability to identify opportunities for reuse, simplify complex technology landscapes and translate enterprise investment into measurable business value.
- Strong understanding of AI and automation and their application to digital products, customer experiences and delivery.
- Proven ability to influence and align senior stakeholders across business, marketing, product and technology organizations without relying solely on direct authority.
- Experience operating successfully in a global, federated environment with competing priorities and varying levels of digital maturity.
- Strong strategic, commercial and analytical skills, with the ability to connect technology and capability decisions to customer outcomes, delivery acceleration and financial value.
- Exceptional communication and leadership skills with the ability to translate complex digital concepts into clear business outcomes.
What Success Looks Like
Success in this role means Manulife increasingly builds once and benefits many times.
Segments are able to deliver their digital roadmaps faster because proven enterprise capabilities are readily available rather than repeatedly designed, procured and built. Capabilities originating in one part of Manulife can be scaled for the benefit of others. Duplicate technology and investment decline. Adoption and reuse increase. AI and automation continuously improve how capabilities are built, operated and consumed.
Over time, Manulife develops a growing portfolio of reusable digital capabilities that compounds the value of each investment - accelerating delivery, improving quality and customer experience, reducing duplication and creating sustainable enterprise-scale benefits.
When you join our team:
- As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.
- We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
- We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.
About Manulife and John Hancock
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.
Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer
At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.
It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact hr@manulife.com.
Referenced Salary Location
Toronto, Ontario
Working Arrangement
Hybrid
Salary range is expected to be between
$129,800.00 CAD - $241,200.00 CAD
Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact hr@manulife.com for the salary range for your location.
Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.
We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.
