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

📋 Tasks and responsibilities

MISSION DESCRIPTION & CONSULTING PROFILE

Description of The Mission

As Stream Lead for Operational Readiness, you lead the end-to-end readiness of a major migration phase in Belgium. The objective is to ensure that Operations and all impacted internal functions are ready from Day 1 to administer, service, control and support the migrated Classic Life and Unit-Linked portfolios safely and effectively.

You translate migration, product, system, legal, risk and finance changes into workable processes, trained teams, controlled cutover activities, business-continuity measures and a stable handover to business as usual, while protecting policyholders, brokers, regulatory compliance and agreed service levels.

Expected deliveries

• Approved operational-readiness plan, including impact and gap assessment.
• Updated procedures and controls for policy servicing, premiums, commissions, claims and benefits, buybacks, disability cover, complaints, documents, AML/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 tracking and competency evidence.
• Change management plan covering stakeholder impact, deployment, adoption and support.
• Target operating model documentation defining RACI, capacity, skills, access rights and segregation of duties.
• Operational transition plan and runbook aligned with the integrated cutover plan.
• Business continuity, fallback and manual-workaround plans.
• Operational-readiness dashboard and evidence pack supporting COO/business-owner sign-off and Go/No-Go.
• Post-go-live hypercare, incident support and a controlled handover to BAU.

Expected role & responsibilities during the mission

• Planning & governance: build and maintain the detailed readiness plan, milestones, dependencies, owners and gates for each migration wave; lead weekly stream governance; provide evidence-based status updates; assess the operational impact of change requests and maintain decision traceability.
• Operational impact, process & control design: lead end-to-end impact and gap assessments across Operations, Finance, IT, Legal/Compliance, Risk, Actuarial and Customer Service; translate stream outputs and historical data into executable processes and exception paths; ensure procedures preserve policy terms, customer rights, audit trails, data protection, AML/sanctions obligations, complaints handling and legal declarations; define KPIs, reconciliations, control points, maker-checker controls and accountable process ownership.
• Requirements, testing & acceptance: define operational requirements for migration, target-system behaviour, documents, interfaces, reporting, access and support tooling; set operational scenarios and acceptance criteria; mobilize SMEs for test support and dry runs; ensure that defects, data-quality exceptions and reconciliation breaks are resolved or formally mitigated.
• People, organization, training & change: design the target organization, 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 across impacted teams.
• Cutover, continuity & hypercare: own the operational runbook and align it with the integrated migration and cutover plan; coordinate freeze windows, backlog management, handovers, staffing rosters, command-centre coverage and Day-1 activation; define fallback and manual workarounds for delays, instability, data defects and unavailable calculations or documents; lead hypercare, incident triage and stabilization until agreed exit criteria and BAU acceptance are achieved.
• Risk, compliance & customer protection: escalate blockers with quantified customer, regulatory, financial, SLA and schedule impact and a credible recovery path; ensure operations align with approved product and onboarding decisions; secure review and sign-off from relevant business and control stakeholders.
• Reporting & coordination: provide weekly RAG reporting on milestones, readiness indicators, risks, defects, training, staffing and cutover; track resource demand, availability and budget impact; coordinate operational dependencies and knowledge transfer.

📝 Your profile

• Experience as a Senior Business Project Manager.
• Minimum 8 years of experience, including at least 3 years leading operational readiness, transformation or migration delivery in insurance or financial services.
• Strong cross-functional operational readiness leadership.
• Deep expertise in Belgian life insurance operations, policy administration and customer or broker servicing.
• Solid understanding of Classic Life and Unit-Linked products, reserves, premiums, commissions, benefits, buybacks and disability cover.
• Knowledge of Solvency II, IDD, GDPR, AML/sanctions, product governance, complaints handling, and regulatory or legal reporting is a plus.
• Hands-on experience with portfolio or data migrations, cutover, hypercare, business continuity and BAU transition.
• Strong capability in process, control and acceptance design.
• Excellent planning, dependency, risk, issue, decision and action management skills.
• Strong stakeholder, governance and executive communication skills across business, technology and control functions.
• Ability to structure ambiguity, challenge constructively and escalate with impact and recommendations.
• Experience designing operating models, RACI structures, capacity plans, training approaches, scorecards and Go/No-Go evidence.
• Strong cutover and incident-management capability; calm and decisive under pressure.
• Customer- and policyholder-first mindset, with a strong focus on control and regulatory compliance.
• Hands-on, structured and delivery-oriented, with a proactive and transparent way of working.
• Proficiency with hybrid delivery and MS Project, Azure DevOps, Excel, Teams, SharePoint and PPM/RAID tooling.
• Languages: English plus Dutch and/or French, with the 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)