Country Product Owner

Country Product Owner – Lending and Trade will have end-to-end responsibility for the development, management, harmonization and phasing out of NeoBiz – Lending & Trade products. He/She will also be responsible for creating all processes to ensure reduction of overall product delivery TAT & achieving an optimum customer experience. This concerns a broad specialism regarding the product, channel or market with end-to-end responsibility for the squad's activities. The Customer Journey expert works in a squad within Mashreq's Digital Studio. Works together with other experts to achieve the squad's mission. Has expertise in the areas of marketing, product management, channel and process optimization. Drives & manages sustained profitability and grow market share of NeoBiz Assets products through penetration of existing customers & developing new Assets products in line with business strategic priorities.

Key Result Areas

• Manage the P & L for all Asset/Lending & Trade products for the NeoBiz i.e SME Loans, Merchant Overdraft, Trade and Working Capital, Non-Funded / Documentary trade.
• Applies profound product/ service knowledge to develop and maintain an attractive and compliant value proposition and delivery excellence for customers. Identify opportunities in the Business Banking space and develop new asset products to maximize market share and profitability for Mashreq.
• Ensure profitable growth for Asset portfolio through sound credit policy, portfolio management and pricing control.
• Define & execute marketing campaigns to drive incremental business volume growth to meet targets & sustained profitability for asset portfolio.
• Keeps track of and analyses market and competition developments (in the area of cost price, market price, market share, legislation and regulations, technological developments, distribution methods and other areas).
• Define & identify cross-sell opportunities within the customer base by developing propensity models with help from Analytics team to increase product penetration index and revenue per customer.
• Responsible to define and monitor KPI's & KPA's linked with financial targets, incentives policies and consequence management to drive channels for maximum profitability.
• Ensure Audit readiness for the Unit.
• Deals with the most urgent incidents and improvement needs.
• Proposes and implements structural improvements to work processes, following improvement needs flagged up from within the touch point.
• Uses his/her technical expertise and experience to contribute to all sprint events (planning, refinements, retrospectives, demos).
• Weighs up development of new products and services against procurement of possible sub- products.
• Initiates customer research.
• Designs strategy in the area of products, channels, promotion, pricing, and product and process quality, in keeping with MASHREQ's brand policy and with customer interests as the starting point for their ideal customer journey.
• Translates the strategy into practical policy. Formulates the product, process and channel policy in keeping with internal and external legislation and regulations, process principles aiming for maximum customer satisfaction and efficiency and the lowest possible cost price.
• Directs implementation of this strategy, tracks squad progress and adjusts wherever necessary in his or her role as a product owner.
• Prioritizes the backlog regarding strategy, customer interests and feasibility in his or her role as product owner and in consultation with the Digital Studio lead.
• Monitors the planning, budget and requirements and completes backlog items during squad sprints.
• Weighs up the implications of margins, volumes and market shares and sets targets, always keeping customer interests a priority.
• Design, maps and improves the performance of Customer Journeys through identifying and collecting available CX and data, and translating UX and IT-landscapes.
• Applies marketing and communication practices to develop and maintain an optimal (digital) mix for channel and/or segments performance.
• Has up-to-date knowledge of the business domain and the underlying application architecture + relevant IT landscape and technologies. Knowledgeable on IT opportunities to support business goals. And is able to translate business solutions into working software by collaborating with IT engineers.
• Provides product information to internal and external parties (such as the press and PR, interbank consultations, internal and external suppliers, consumer and interest groups, industry regulators and the government).
• Manages, coaches, inspires, develops, evaluates and assesses employees. Creates the required environment and enables employees to do their jobs well, both now and in the future.

Operating Environment, Framework and Boundaries, Working Relationships

• Prioritizes the backlog regarding strategy, customer interests and feasibility in his or her role as product owner and in consultation with senior Management.
• Has a helicopter view and determines priorities based on context.
• Masters the fundamentals of all core capabilities of CUSTOMER JOURNEY and has profound knowledge in at least one field of expertise for which he or she is regarded as go-to person within the Digital Studio.
• Is a go-to-person for the team when encountering challenges.
• Improves himself in everything he / she does.
• Challenges and improves own work and that of colleagues continuously and vice versa.
• Serves as an example of giving and receiving feedback and acts upon it.
• Sets the rules for activities and enhances them.
• Writes job aids and provides training.

Problem Solving

• Facilitate cross functional teams for process improvement.
• Resolve issues with sales and credit underwriters to help achieving sales goals.
• Ability to analyze drivers of product profitability and to model prospective profitability of new and enhanced offerings.
• Carrying out independent market intelligence function as an on-going program throughout the year.
• Ability to identify problems with existing policy and propose solution.
• Work with all teams to ensure Product Profitability.

Decision Making Authority & Responsibility

• Re-pricing the products to ensure the overall product profitability.
• Implementation/adherence to compliance and other regulations.
• Ensure business continuity.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Graduate with minimum 10+ years of related banking and finance experience.
• Sound knowledge of credit underwriting techniques and risk analysis (qualitative, analytical, and scoring based).
• Strong understanding of P&L and marketing development across the various product life cycle stages.
• Experience as a Product Owner / Product Manager with software products.
• Experience in Agile methodologies.
• Strong negotiation and leadership skills.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

Seniority level: Mid-Senior level

Employment type: Full-time

Job function: Sales, General Business, and Product Management

Industries: Banking