Job Introduction
The Head of Digital Product (Credit) role resides within the Handelsbanken Digital department and is responsible for overseeing the strategy and development of the Bank’s digital products relating to the credit process across both the private and corporate banking segments.
Playing an important role within the Bank’s Business Transformation programme, the role holder will lead dynamic multi-disciplinary teams responsible for researching, designing, building and/or procuring, and releasing transformative user journeys – for both customers and employees. They are responsible for engaging collaboratively with the Business functions (including Credit, Financial Product, the Branch, etc.) in order to ensure all interests are represented in the development of the Bank’s future state credit capability and to support the adoption and embedding of new processes.
The role holder will be responsible for defining the overarching credit digital product vision, building the roadmaps and leading the prioritisation to deliver that vision in a performant, secure and user focussed way. In doing so, they will ensure alignment to wider Bank strategy and ensure that maximum business value is achieved. Together with a Technology counterpart, they will be accountable for delivering and then driving the continual optimisation of the credit digital products to support the realisation of a seamless, flexible customer and colleague experience.
The Head of Digital Product (Credit) will also have ongoing responsibility for the governance, risk management and regulatory compliance activities relating to the digital products under their ownership, forging strong, effective relationships with the 1st and 2nd line control functions.
Main Responsibility
- Develop a vision for the credit related digital products and, together with the Technology lead, be accountable for the delivery of that roadmap, ensuring alignment to the Digital Product and wider Bank strategy, with a clear user focussed service design approach.
- Collaborate with key staleholders from across the Business including Credit, the Branch, Financial Product and the control functions to understand business requirements and priorities, supporting effective inclusion in your product roadmap.
- Build and lead a high performing team of Digital Product Owners who oversee proactive, customer focussed multi-disciplinary teams.
- Develop an inclusive and collaborative culture where the advice and knowledge of skilled specialists around user insights, journey and UX design, technology delivery, security and infrastructure are heard and respected in order to develop highly effective digital products through a process of research, ideation and design.
- Foster and develop a customer-centric ethos and promote a mindset of continuous learning, including establishing clear structures to learn from live running, sourcing data and analysis on performance in order to prioritise improvements and change accordingly.
- Forge a strong working relationship with Technology and partner with them on the development and delivery of the credit digital products.
- Define and measure the success criteria for the credit digital products, creating a clear set of OKRs that support the Business Transformation goals and the Bank’s wider strategic objectives. Establish clear feedback loops to understand the impact of your product and feed changes and improvements in to your backlog.
- Manage and prioritise the overall credit digital product backlog and ensure that delivery teams are aligned to deliver maximum business value through effective scoping and sizing of planned features.
- Design and develop overall processes and process steps within the credit journey, taking accountability for the effects on existing internal and Branch processes and services.
- Be jointly responsible with the Technology lead for ensuring the smooth delivery of credit digital products to end users, with clear responsibility for effective communications and training.
- Exercise end user insights to continuously enhance seamlessly consumable customer-centric credit services, increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.
- Actively promote and ensure adherence to the Bank's Risk Management framework (including sub-frameworks) and relevant risk and compliance policies and procedures, ensuring timely and appropriate escalation of concerns to relevant stakeholders.
- Work closely with stakeholders in Group (Sweden), where required, to accelerate digital development and ensure optimal ways of working.
- Work collaboratively with other Heads of Digital Product to ensure overall alignment is achieved between products to deliver user and technical consistency and to establish an effective community of practise around digital product ownership.
- Serve as a digital product SME, influencing, inspiring and educating others at all levels across the Bank, sharing knowledge and being a vocal and engaging proponent of the impact of digital change and delivery.
- Keep abreast of market trends, innovation and competitor propositions.
The Ideal Candidate
- Outstanding SME in digital product management and digital user experience design, preferably within the Financial Services industry.
- Customer-centric with a strong focus on end user experience and outcomes.
- Demonstrable experience in the end to end lifecycle of product development, including managing and delivering high quality digital products to end users, from ideation through to delivery, feedback and improvement.
- Experience and/or a robust understanding of the credit process solutions is highly desirable.
- In-depth knowledge of agile methodologies and significant experience of working within an agile environment.
- High degree of proficiency in prototyping and iterative development, with experience in building product teams desirable.
- Highly positive and effective leader, who actively coaches, develops, and supports team members, sharing their experience and knowledge with others.
- Be driven, have high levels of personal accountability, not being afraid to be hands-on and get into the detail.
- Strong influencing skills with the ability to confidently represent the Digital Product area and gain buy-in to the strategy and roadmap with a diverse set of stakeholders.
- Ability to work independently and manage multiple projects simultaneously, often with competing priorities.
- Have strong people skills; approachable, empathetic and able to work with people to achieve progress.
- Have strong written and verbal communication skills.
- A good knowledge of the Financial Services industry.
- Strong awareness of the digital banking ecosystem, keeping abreast of market trends and competitor propositions.
- Relevant certifications or qualifications in agile product management or aligned disciplines.
- Understanding of development processes and business case development.
Role competencies:
1. Actively Builds Relationships
2. Embraces Change and Technology
3. Acts According to Handelsbanken Culture
4. Creates Business Value
5. Role Specific Regulations
6. Risk Management, Governance and Controls
7. Consumer Duty
You must comply with 6 Conduct rules i.e.
- act with integrity
- act with due skill, care and diligence
- be open and co-operative with the FCA, PRA and other regulators
- pay due regard to the interests of customers and treat them fairly
- observe proper standards of market conduct.
- You must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers
About the Company
Handelsbanken is a relationship bank with a decentralised way of working, a strong local presence thanks to a nationwide network of branches, and a long-term approach to customer relations. Each Handelsbanken branch operates as a local business enabling it to make decisions at a local level and provide a bespoke service. The focus is always on the need of the individual customer and not on the sale of specific products.
The Bank is deeply committed to embedding good equality and diversity practice into all of our activities. This is so that we are an inclusive, welcoming and inspiring place to work that encourages everyone to apply, regardless of socio-economic background, age, disability, pregnancy and/or parental status, race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin), veteran status, marital and civil partnership status, religion or belief, sex, gender reassignment or sexual orientation.