Head of Asia Strategy & Transformation

General Description

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. We provide financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups and institutions.  With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we operate as Manulife across our offices in Asia, Canada, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States.

Our Asia segment provides insurance products and insurance-based wealth accumulation products, driven by a customer-centric strategy, leveraging the asset management expertise and products managed by our Global Wealth and Asset Management segment. Present in many of Asia’s largest and fastest growing economies, we are well positioned to capitalize on the attractive underlying demographics of the region, underpinned by a rigorous focus on creating value for our customers, employees and shareholders.

In 2025, our Asia segment contributed 38% of the Company’s core earnings from operating segments and as of December 31 2025, accounted for 13% of the Company’s assets under management and administration. Asia reported net income attributed to shareholders of C$2,972 million in 2025, compared with C$2,355 million in 2024.

The Asia Strategy and Transformation team sets the strategic direction and ambition of Manulife’s Asia business and connects strategy to disciplined execution and value realization. This role is pivotal in shaping Asia segment strategy, leading the strategic planning process and scorecard management, and overseeing priority transformation programs. The role provides regional oversight of portfolio investment planning and prioritization, governance and performance of strategic initiatives, while ensuring alignment with Asia’s strategic objectives and target performance outcomes.

The Head of Strategy and Transformation, Asia will be based in Hong Kong and report directly to the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Asia. The role serves as a trusted adviser to the Asia Executive Team, bringing together country, functional and Enterprise stakeholders to shape strategy. Working closely with the Global Strategy and Transformation team and the Enterprise Strategic Portfolio Management Office, the role strengthens alignment between Asia and Enterprise priorities, governance and portfolio decision-making.

Responsibilities

Develop high impact strategies in partnership with business/functional leads to drive profitable growth

• Spearhead the development of Asia’s growth strategy and lead the organization’s vision and business case for change in a way that inspires commitment in others. Inform strategy development through a rich understanding of external factors (i.e. tech, customer, industry, competitor trends) and internal capabilities of the company.
• Assess internal and external data to size growth opportunities to derive point of reference of where we are today, future aspirations and go-forward strategy, identifying key initiatives against the opportunities, prioritizing the initiatives and defining success metrics across the priorities and initiatives to measure financial and non- financial performance.
• Drive the annual strategic planning process with Finance and facilitate dialogue around prioritization of key strategic and transformational initiatives.
• Drive strategic alignment across functional and country priorities with Asia’s strategic ambition and Enterprise strategy, establishing clear, prioritized roadmap for initiatives to accelerate, continue, resharpen or deprioritize.
• Actively monitor and share with leadership key strategic and financial results of global peers relative to Manulife Asia’s own progress to ensure that the company is on track to achieve its ambition and to gain key insights into its strategic decisions.
• Act as strategic counsel to the Asia CEO and Asia Marketing and Strategy Officer on an ongoing basis.

Ensure clear governance and seamless execution, closely monitor progress, and communicate results widely to create momentum for transformation

• Oversee strategic initiatives to meet financial and non-financial targets. Partner with key business and functional partners to monitor progress against strategy aspirations and work with the BUs to develop specific action plans to ensure progress remains on track.
• Execute our strategic plan to deliver financial and operational targets, generate momentum to exceed financial and non-financial aspirations. This includes defining ambitious individual and organizational goals that support Asia’s and broader enterprise objectives and developing clearly defined KPIs to enhance engagement and ownership to drive execution and transformation.
• Drive the communication of the strategy throughout the organization and beyond in partnership with the Asia Marketing and Strategy Officer, Asia CEO and executive team. Communicate and maintain business alignment between regional executives direction and BU direction through facilitating clear and engaging communication (e.g. GM/ADEC offsites, ALC) to ensure effective strategic dialogue and timely updates on quarterly results and progress of strategic initiatives.
• Facilitate prioritisation and investment trade-offs across Asia’s transformation portfolio and integrated Book of Work, aligning funding and capacity with the highest-value strategic priorities.
• Drive Asia Portfolio Committee governance and mobilise senior leaders to make timely portfolio decisions and address material risks, dependencies, and execution barriers.
• Partner with Finance and business leaders to set expectations for investment discipline and value realisation across the Asia portfolio, challenging spend and benefit performance and holding initiative owners accountable for delivering business outcomes.
• Provide executive project oversight of priority transformation programs, holding accountable executives and owners responsible to ensure programs are delivered with a focus on scope, quality, timeliness and within budget. It also involves driving excellence in planning practices across the enterprise portfolio of projects, resulting in improved time to market and the full realization of benefits.

Developing a high performing team focused on execution, transformation, collaboration, transparency, accountability and innovative thinking

• Attracts, develops and retains top strategy talent.
• Develops a strong track record and pipeline of moving top strategy talent into key business and functional roles.
• Plays an active role in the career development of the Global Strategy and Transformation community, ensuring that personal development plans for staff are in place and that high potential staff are profiled for stretch assignments.
• Build on and lead a high performing team by identifying, developing and retaining top talent, and by creating a culture that encourages transparency, inclusivity and innovation.
• Foster an environment conducive to talking appropriate business risks and ensure the required organizational capabilities and talent are in place to support the execution. 

Knowledge/Skills/Competencies/Education:

Strategic and Commercial Acumen

• Strategy development: Intellectually curious with robust problem-solving skills; able to dissect issues and uncover root causes and underlying drivers.
• Experienced in commissioning and leveraging research; knowledgeable of key emerging trends and opportunities. Able to assess the implications of, and effectively navigate, regulatory and geopolitical issues affecting a diversified, global organization.
• Proven track record in setting complex global strategies and driving trade-offs necessary for implementation and impact.
• Commercial understanding: Able to translate strategic ideas into critical business decisions. Can quickly separate the ‘mission-critical’ from the ‘nice to dos’ / trivials’; able to determine what is the next most useful thing to work on; focuses on the critical few tasks that really add value and puts aside or delays the rest.
• Astute decision-making: Applies sound judgment to business and strategic issues. Able to quickly integrate complex information and different points of view in problem solving exercises. Effectively probes for information critical to the decision at hand.
• Comfortable making decisions without full information. Demonstrates new insights into situations. Experienced in balancing and reconciling the complementary and competing needs of executive and business leaders.

Executing for Results

• Focus and ambition: Has a proven track record of leading a strategy team/organization (internal or external). Exhibits a winning mindset to drive and lead the organization; does not see mediocrity as an option in terms of deliverables and execution. Is not afraid to challenge the status quo; exhibits a mindset of creativity, and an energetic drive to succeed. Able to set and meet aggressive goals and action plans, both as an individual and with a team.
• Versatility: Comfortable pivoting from macro to micro issues, from shaping the strategy through to the day-to-day details of launching/piloting new initiatives. Able to execute against multiple projects/workstreams and excel in a fast-paced environment with an evolving portfolio of projects.
• Operational excellence: Exhibits a highly disciplined approach to developing and executing growth and efficiency strategies and initiatives that reflect the broader business objectives; able to incorporate key inputs from multiple stakeholder groups. Closely manages initiatives for impact.

Leading Teams

• Building talent: A proven leader able to build, lead, motivate and retain a high performing team. Insightful about the talent the organization needs to be successful; recruits and develops people with this in mind. Uses multiple methods to grow capability in the organization. Skillfully coaches and mentors others.
• Inspiring and motivating: Gets the best performance from people. Taps into people’s needs, interests and goals to motivate them to achieve. Inspires commitment from people and mobilizes teams toward high performance and goal achievement.
• Integrity: Adheres to the highest standards of personal and professional integrity and sets a positive example for others.

Influencing and Relationship Building

• Influencing: Has exceptional influencing skills; adept at driving organizational change through partnership, collaboration and leadership rather than title or line authority. Strong communications and interpersonal skills, gravitas and “boardroom presence”; highly credible with senior executives while able to connect and build trust-based relationships with stakeholders at all levels of an organization. Able to sell ideas inside and outside the organization. Gains commitment and support from others by involving them in the thinking and decision making.
• Change leadership: Successfully guides the organization through change, while maintaining focus and intensity. Is viewed as a change agent and builds a shared vision for change. Is confident yet possesses humility; able to “check the ego at the door” and is highly collaborative and engaging. Decisive yet inclusive; able to challenge and defend positions in a respectful way. Comfortable sharing credit with others.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Has a proven track record engaging and partnering with BU leaders and cross-functional teams.

Qualifications:

• Previous Strategy experience with a top-tier strategy consulting firm, or in-house Corporate Strategy and/or Corporate Development experience required.
• Experience in multinational top tier financial services and/or insurance organizations required. Knowledge of and experience in the life insurance industry preferred.
• Strong business acumen and highly developed communication and relationship skills.
• Broad network and Asia experience preferred.
• Strong academic background includes undergraduate degree in business or related field; MBA or other advanced/post graduate designation a plus.

Personal and Leadership Competencies Required Include:

Energize

Sees change as an opportunity – to learn, grow, and excel. Capitalizes on agility, adaptability, resiliency and an “always learning” growth mindset. Encourage curiosity, creativity, and establishes psychological safety and trust for the team to share freely test and learn.

• Role-models effective verbal and written communication, demonstrating poise, projecting authenticity and credibility.

• Inspires and connects with a range of audiences through storytelling, sharing personal experiences, and delivering meaningful messages aligned to the organization vision and strategy.

• Helps shape the image of the organization through influence and interaction with a wide range of internal and external audiences.
• Can navigate self and others through times of transformation, with excitement and enthusiasm.
• Looks for and champions new ways of working to enable easier, faster, more reliable experiences for our employees and customers.

Connect

Creates trust, embraces growth, and nurtures connections. Relies on team and collaborates with others to produce the outcomes our customers deserve. Removes silos to find the right person with the right skillset. Demonstrates tact and bravery to have the necessary difficult conversations to help people grow and excel. Rally people around a shared goal, to drive results for customers, colleagues, and shareholders.

• Fosters a spirit of teamwork and strategic partnership across the organization, bringing the organization together around a common purpose to advance business strategy.
• Enables leaders to build connections for their teams, connecting employees with other employees, experts or resources to foster collaboration and to produce superior outcomes.
• Promotes a positive and engaged work environment where continuous learning, coaching, and feedback are an integral part of the culture.
• Can effectively coach others and actively sponsors opportunities for leaders to build coaching and mentoring capabilities.
• Ensures that talent development is one of our strategic priorities and works with leaders to make the right talent investments to achieve our organizational objectives.

Excel

Accountable to both the company and their teams for meeting and exceeding expectations. Applies global industry trends to our customer solutions. Possesses superior business knowledge and understanding of our global business, and is also organized, clear on their priorities, and transparent in their actions with others. Can articulate the goal and the steps needed to get there, while also trusting people to do their jobs and empowering teams to make decisions to get things done.

• Creates a compelling vision and sets goals with longer-term objectives and implications for the organization in mind.
• Champions a results-oriented organizational culture and motivates others to strive for meaningful impacts for the organization.
• Utilizes business and technical knowledge to educate others and help them connect the dots between decisions, actions, and impact on business results and customer engagement.
• Translates understanding of the economic or business climate and the organization’s priorities to assist teams in structuring and prioritizing work.
• Fosters an environment where others are empowered to make effective decisions and takes action. 
• Owns the outcome and will make difficult business and people decisions when required.
• Encourages open discussion for timely identification of risks, and coaches and models risk-aware behavior and ensures appropriate resources are in place to properly manage risks for my business/function and for the organization.

This Position Description is intended to describe the general nature and level of the work being performed by employees in this job. It is not intended to be a complete list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required for this job classification.

When you join our team:

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
• As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact [email protected].

Hybrid