PORTFOLIO MANAGER - VOLUNTARY SAVINGS & RETIREMENT PROGRAMS

Overview

Role Overview

• This is a senior portfolio management role embedded within a major Saudi social insurance organisation.
• The Portfolio Manager will lead the delivery of a portfolio of voluntary savings and retirement programs spanning defined contribution schemes, home downpayment savings, children's savings, expat savings, retirement planning, and financial literacy initiatives.
• The role requires someone who can manage interdependent programs as a single integrated portfolio, provide executive-level governance and reporting, and coordinate across product, digital, regulatory, investment, and partnership workstreams simultaneously.
• This is not a project management role in the traditional sense. The successful candidate will need to operate as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, translating complex product and delivery challenges into clear executive choices while keeping a portfolio of strategically significant programs on track.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of voluntary savings programs from concept through to pilot and full-scale launch, ensuring each program is delivered against agreed scope, timeline, and quality standards.
• Identify and actively manage dependencies, sequencing issues, shared enablers, and common digital requirements across the portfolio to avoid duplication and maximise delivery efficiency.
• Provide executive-level portfolio reporting that links delivery progress to product launch readiness, strategic benefits realisation, risk status, dependencies, and decisions required from senior leadership.
• Coordinate across product design, operating model, digital enablement, legal, compliance, partnerships, finance, marketing, and customer service teams to move programs from design to implementation.
• Support the design and operationalisation of savings products across account opening, enrolment, contribution collection, fund allocation, member servicing, withdrawals, and reporting.
• Manage multi-party ecosystem partnerships with financial institutions, asset managers, banks, fintechs, employers, and government entities, including partner roles, operating interfaces, service levels, data sharing, and commercial arrangements.
• Coordinate business requirements with digital, CRM, data, and channel teams to ensure customer journeys are effectively translated from design into functional digital products covering onboarding, KYC, account servicing, contribution management, dashboards, and notifications.
• Use data and analytics to monitor product uptake, contribution behaviour, activation rates, engagement, and benefits realisation, and to develop or challenge KPIs linked to subscribers, active contributors, average contribution values, investment returns, and retirement readiness outcomes.
• Prepare high-quality steering committee materials, option papers, trade-off analyses, and Board-level updates that convert complex delivery and product issues into clear executive choices.

Essential Skills & Experience

• A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience, with 5 or more years preferred, in project, program or portfolio management within financial services, savings, pension, wealth management, or a comparable environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing the launch of financial products from concept to pilot and scale, with the ability to translate product concepts into implementation plans, decision papers, launch roadmaps, and readiness checklists.
• Strong understanding of voluntary savings and retirement products including defined contribution schemes, member contribution structures, fund options, investment choices, withdrawal rules, lock-in periods, incentives, and customer value propositions.
• Working knowledge of investment product structures, asset allocation, risk profiles, fund performance reporting, and member-facing investment communication.
• Experience coordinating savings product operating models across internal teams and external partners including banks, asset managers, fintechs, employers, and government entities.
• Proven capability in executive advisory and decision support, including the preparation of steering committee materials and board-level updates, and the ability to challenge teams constructively and escalate issues when scope, timeline, or partner readiness is at risk.
• Strong planning, risk management, dependency tracking, and delivery monitoring skills across complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Experience working with regulatory and compliance frameworks relevant to savings, pension, investment, insurance, or financial services products.
• Proficiency in English is required.

Desirable Skills & Experience

• Experience within social insurance, pension, or public sector financial services organisations.
• Background in banks, wealth management, asset management, insurance, or fintech companies focused on savings, investment, or pension products.
• Experience leading or coordinating change management initiatives in large-scale transformation programmes.
• Familiarity with segment-specific savings product design including expat savings, children's savings, home downpayment savings, and financial literacy programmes.
• Experience working on public sector transformation programmes with a financial services or citizen services dimension.
• Arabic language proficiency.

• PgMP (Program Management Professional)

• Prior experience in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the broader GCC region.