Associate Director, Agency Compliance, Tied Agency

About FWD Group

FWD Group (1828.HK) is a pan-Asian life and health insurance business that serves approximately 34 million customers across 10 markets, including BRI Life in Indonesia. FWD’s customer-led and tech-enabled approach aims to deliver innovative propositions, easy-to-understand products and a simpler insurance experience. Established in 2013, the company operates in some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world with a vision of changing the way people feel about insurance. FWD Group is listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the stock code 1828.

For more information, please visit www.fwd.com

For more information about FWD Hong Kong, please visit www.fwd.com.hk/.

Role Summary

This role is to lead and oversee agency compliance team, which works as a 1.5 line of defense for Agency Channel to ensure full adherence to regulatory requirements and the company's compliance and risk management standards, while driving a culture of compliance and responsible sales practices across the agency channel (including sales monitoring, control & audit).

The Job                                       

Policies, Guidelines and Programs

• Responsible for the overall design, implementation and ongoing enhancement of agency sales management policies and guidelines, with effective controls monitoring programs in fulfilling group and regulatory requirements, such as conduct risk requirements, whilst ensuring alignment with business objectives.

• Represent Agency in Group and Local Compliance initiatives relating to distribution sales.

• Collaborate with Law, Risk and Compliance to interpret regulatory requirements and expectations, and facilitate the implementation of appropriate standards to ensure compliant with regulatory guidelines and requirements for distribution teams and intermediaries.

• Proactively identify and address regulatory changes and their impact on distribution practices.

• Provide solid and practical governance advice and support on business initiatives

Governance Culture and Ethics

• Promote good conduct and customer protection culture in agency channel through ongoing engagement, communication and effective education program & training, with smart sales tips and best practice bulletins

• Develop and roll out training programs for agency channel on regulatory requirements and ethical sales practices.

• Ensure regular communication and continuous education of agents on compliance-related issues, policy changes, and best practices.

• Work closely with intermediaries, Distribution Teams, Risk and Compliance, to ensure full adherence to the company’s compliance and risk management requirements

• Observe best sales practice and promote quality selling among agency channels

Reporting and Monitoring

• Develop and implement multiple dashboards/ report for the review of distribution quality, and actively identify and prevent misconduct issues

• Develop and implement all required quality indicators and report to company’s committee on a regular basis

• Conduct periodic sample checking on sales compliance requirements

• Conduct quality assurance reviews of sales practices to identify conduct and compliance risks, and recommend timely risk-mitigating actions

• Identify misconduct behaviors via detection tools / reporting and provide advice to sales intermediaries

• Report distribution quality to company’s committee on a regular basis

• Ensure full adherence to the company’s approach and procedures in dealing with suspected instances of misconduct by employees and/or fraud and misappropriations by intermediaries, from receiving allegations to planning and conducting investigations.

• Timely identify and escalate misconduct issues to relevant stakeholders.

Regulatory Review

• Manage and coordinate requests for meeting, process for exams, monitoring reviews, conduct inspection, etc. as requested by regulators

• Lead pre-meeting/exams/reviews/inspection readiness preparation, tough-point meetings with regulators/relevant internal stakeholders and management, and closing meeting

• Follow up and coordinate responses on result / further requests; escalate any identified issues to management / stakeholders; actively provide advice / solutions and drive changes as appropriate

• Interpret regulatory changes and advise the business on their implications.

Staff Development

• Responsible for coaching and developing team members to strengthen the capabilities of the team.

• Accountable for succession planning and talent management within the department.

The Person

• Bachelor’s degree holder or above, in appropriate field (e.g., Risk Management, Business Management, Finance, Accounting, Insurance or Law) with minimum 10 years solid work experience in the financial industry handling 1st or 1.5 line of defense /or controls, and at least 5 years in managerial role.

• In-depth understanding of the Insurance business preferred, ideally insurance agency, or financial services/banking sector with.

• Comprehensive knowledge of insurance regulations and compliance requirements

• Experience is dealing with regulators and on-site inspection/audit

• Must be organized, detail-oriented and analytical.

• Excellent interpersonal skills.

• Independent and able to work under pressure.

• Must possess strong leadership, coaching and influencing skills; strong business acumen; effective change management skills; problem solving and decision making skills.

• With high-level of integrity and takes ownership and accountability of results.

• Excellent command of English and Chinese including Mandarin and Cantonese, both written and oral.

We offer 5-day work, 20-22 days annual leaves, excellent learning & development opportunities and an attractive package to the right candidate.

Information collected will be treated in strict confidence and used solely for recruitment purpose. The company will retain all applications no longer than 24 months of which will be destroyed thereafter. When there are vacancies in any of our subsidiaries, holding companies, associated or affiliated companies of, or companies controlled by, or under common control with the Company during that period, we may transfer your application to them for consideration of employment. We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, disability or family status in employment process.