Director, Personal Insurance Strategic Initiatives

Dir Strategic Initiatives - NS06AE
We're determined to make a difference and are proud to be an insurance company that goes well beyond coverages and policies. Working here means having every opportunity to achieve your goals - and to help others accomplish theirs, too. Join our team as we help shape the future.

This role may be filled at either the Director or Assistant Vice President (AVP) level, depending on the selected candidate's experience, leadership capabilities, and demonstrated track record.

The Director, Personal Insurance Strategic Initiatives will report to the Head of PI Strategy and partner with the Senior Leadership Team to shape, evolve, and communicate PI's long-term strategic vision and execution. This role will bring an outside-in perspective to leadership decision-making, assess PI's strategic positioning, and help advance the innovation agenda through market-informed strategic priorities.

The Director will analyze market and competitive research, external listening posts, and emerging trends to develop a clear point of view on potential business and strategic implications. This will require a strong understanding of core business value drivers and fluency in customer, operational, and financial performance analysis. In partnership with the Head of PI Strategy and SLT, the Director will translate these insights into strategic plays that position PI to win in the future marketplace, drive outsized growth, and increased market share.

The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker with strong insurance or financial services business acumen, exceptional communication skills, and a collaborative, customer-first mindset. The Director, Strategic Initiatives will bring innovative thinking and have the curiosity to solve business problems and continuously improve and drive enhanced outcomes with business partners.

• Serve as the strategic analytical engine for the Senior Leadership team, taking external market, emerging threats and opportunities, and customer, distribution, and competitor trends to create and maintain an evergreen point of view of key strategic hypotheses. This is done in strong collaboration with various groups across the enterprise (e.g., Business SMEs, Economic & Geopolitical Risks, Competitive Intelligence, Market Research, Customer Research). Topics include the future of Autonomous Vehicles, Embedded Insurance, IoT, the future AI Marketplace, and the potential risk/opportunities that they present for The Hartford.
• Develop long-term strategic plays through an external and future-focused lens, partnering with the PI Innovation Value Stream and enterprise partners (e.g., Y-Risk, other strategy/innovation teams) to craft promising innovation ideas for incubation and testing.
• Conduct strategic assessments in response to emerging or urgent trends as-needed, including SWOT analyses, trend implications, and recommendations for PI Senior Leadership.
• Support the communication of the PI strategy to the Executive Leadership team and the Board of Directors
• Support PI Senior Leadership offsites with updates and advancements on our long-term strategic perspectives on market and competitive position

• 6+ years of experience in strategy/market research/innovation roles at a P&C carrier or financial institution
• Strong business and financial acumen with the ability to translate complex data into actionable insights, backed by fluency in operational and financial performance analysis
• Deep intellectual curiosity and unconstrained mindset
• Experience with hypothesis-driven market and competitive trends research that drives to specific strategic insights and recommendations
• Proven ability to build relationships and influence across a matrixed organization, becoming a trusted thought partner to senior leadership
• Skilled storyteller able to synthesize a large volume of information and articulate complex ideas in a clear, concise, and compelling deliverables tailored to a variety of audiences, including the Senior Leadership team and Board of Directors
• Self-starter comfortable working in a small, agile, and highly matrixed team
• Expert in PowerPoint and Excel; experienced with MS Co-Pilot or similar GenAI tools