Investment Vendor Oversight Consultant

Investment Management Strategy and Planning

Full-Time, Hybrid (3 days/week in office)

Springfield, MA or Boston, MA

The Opportunity

Investment Management (IM) is looking to hire a skilled and dynamic relationship manager to drive strategic partnerships and foster relationships with key third-party vendors. This individual will report to the Head of Strategy and Planning and will primarily manage and monitor MassMutual’s relationship with these vendors across various facets of our business. They will uphold the team’s governance framework working with cross-functional teams across MassMutual and its vendors to identify, document, communicate, and memorialize challenges and opportunities, improve processes, build strong relationships, and provide transparency into the overall health of these relationships. They will support the execution of policies and procedures that support IM’s mission, vision, and strategy.

The Team

The Strategy and Planning team is part of IM’s Strategy and Governance Organization. The Strategy and Governance team drives IM’s strategy forward, optimizing governance and decision-making processes, analyzes, and establishes common metrics, processes, and tools and supports key internal and external stakeholders in progressing the IM target operating model. The team is also responsible for coordinating the department’s strategic initiatives, Investment Compliance, Investment Due Diligence, reporting, manager oversight, vendor oversight and Investment Data Strategy and Governance.

The Impact

In this role, you will be responsible for forming and maintaining strong relationships with Investment Management’s key third party vendors. You will quickly come to understand connection points, core processes and procedures, key resources that support business functions, and navigate interdependencies. You will work collaboratively but persistently with our business partners to improve interactions with these vendors understanding the challenges and opportunities they face in working with vendor platforms and servicers.  You will partner with subject matter experts to document, prioritize, and drive associated process and data improvement efforts to completion. You will be the primary contact between the vendors and Investment Management business teams.

In this role you will have the unique opportunity to:

• Collaborate with leads on projects, work efforts, and BAU activities that require support from our investment managers and work together to prioritize and navigate barriers and interdependencies related to our requests
• Advance relationships with key business stakeholders to deepen partnerships
• Develop and maintain an intake model for a master inventory of opportunities within these relationships
• Prepare agendas and facilitate weekly relationship meetings
• Work with business partners to document, track, and socialize inputs to monitor KPIs, SLAs, and agreed upon objectives which will help create transparency into the health of vendor relationships
• Partner with IM’s vendors to understand their business, challenges, and constraints, and use this information to influence the approach we take to solving problems and improving our interactions
• Ensure teams across IM are monitoring their SLAs and raising issues when needed
• Build and maintain robust relationships and partnerships with key contacts at vendors and in the business, ensuring mutual understanding of strategic goals and investment priorities
• In collaboration with our planning and enablement team, track and manage provider costs and billing accuracy, conducting cost reviews and analyses to ensure alignment with expected business plan costs
• Monitor third-party risk, including operational, financial, and cybersecurity risks, proactively identifying potential issues and escalating as needed to Investment Management Controls Team or Enterprise Risk Management
• Review and oversee business resilience processes, including business continuity planning, disaster recovery plans, and vendor exit planning management
• Collaborate with IM’s vendor partners to understand their business, product roadmap, as well as challenges & constraints, and use this information to influence the approach we take to solving problems and improving our interactions
• Communicate and oversee change as influenced by vendor activity including the management of internal change that must be notified to impacted vendors and external vendor-driven change which requires coordination with MassMutual
• Represent MassMutual’s interest in engagements with our vendors

The Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree
• 7+ years of related business experience in a subset of the following: IM, insurance, procurement, relationship management, project management or financial services

The Ideal Qualifications

• Higher degree, MBA or equivalent
• IM or buy-side experience
• Experience in the insurance industry
• Experience with Smartsheet
• Experience managing vendor relationships, SLA’s and KPI’s
• Understanding of the financial markets
• Work independently and with ambiguity
• Is growth-minded, willing to learn new things, and is adaptable to an evolving environment
• Can identify and raise opportunities for process improvement and operational efficiency
• Proven ability to establish and maintain strong relationships with peers and key partners throughout the organization
• Comfortable working collaboratively across the organization and together with external vendors in support of our complex, fast-paced, dynamic, and continually evolving business environment
• High degree of integrity and ability to maintain confidentiality with business & organizational information
• Demonstrated ability to understand how tasks and milestones connect across related department objectives
• Outstanding verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills
• Exhibit high emotional intelligence

What to expect as part of MassMutual and the team

• Regular meetings with Strategy and Planning team
• Focused one-on-one meetings with your manager
• Access to mentorship opportunities
• Networking opportunities including access to Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, African American, women, LGBTQ, veteran, and disability-focused Business Resource Groups
• Access to learning content on Degreed and other informational platforms
• Your ethics and integrity will be valued by a company with a strong and stable ethical business with industry leading pay and benefits

#LI-FT1

MassMutual is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer Minority/Female/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity/Individual with Disability/Protected Veteran. We welcome all persons to apply. Note: Veterans are welcome to apply, regardless of their discharge status.
If you need an accommodation to complete the application process, please contact us and share the specifics of the assistance you need.