Director of Strategic Partnerships

At Smart, our mission is to transform retirement, savings and financial wellbeing, across all generations, around the world.

THE ROLE

As our new Director of Strategic Partnerships you will be responsible for identifying, managing and executing on large, complex strategic opportunities and relationships for the Smart Pension Master Trust. You will be accountable for customer centric leadership and development of partnerships in the UK pensions market. Supporting the CEO (UK), CCO and wider leadership team that contribute to the execution of the business strategy.

Responsibilities:

Strategic Management and Planning

• Setting strategic direction, working with the CEO (UK), CCO and other senior leaders to build close partnerships with external clients and prospects across the UK.
• Manage relationships across internal business functions to design and achieve a delivery function that is customer centric, efficient and adds value.
• Ensure a commercial focus on achieving benefit for the partners, customers and business investors, influencing and implementing solutions which add measurable value.
• Input into product development roadmap, propositions and organisational capabilities required to maximise our profitable growth.

Business Development and Prospecting

• Working with the senior leaders support and manage opportunities across the UK that represent significant revenue opportunity to the firm.
• Lead and coordinate efforts across the deal cycle from identification and evaluation of opportunities through to pitching, negotiating, contracting and onboarding.
• Lead sales planning and support activities to ensure partnerships are set up for success and business goals are met.
• Ensure appropriate qualification of opportunities to drive focus on winnable value.
• Support the successful delivery of new partnerships.

Strategic Account Management

• Full accountability for a selected portfolio of partnership accounts.
• Identify and seek ways to commercialise new product, segment and development opportunities that will drive increased value to Smart.
• Identify and manage account specific risks working cross- functional.
• Bring the relevant resources to bear from across the business.

Business and Financial Management

• Ensures profitable growth and competitive strength.
• Communicate strategies to be implemented to deliver positive change.
• Analyse and interpret management reporting to ensure transparency of performance against business goals.
• Gather comprehensive information to support decision making and recommendation.

Corporate Governance

• Ensure all company duties are carried out in a compliant manner, in line with all presiding local regulations.
• Ensure adherence to local regulations and Smart’s global policies as and when applicable.
• Undertake risk identification and management in line with business processes.

Requirements

The skills, experience, and aptitudes we are looking for are listed below but please don’t be discouraged from applying if you don’t meet every single one of these criteria – having a ‘can do’ attitude is sometimes more important than being able to tick every box:

• Ideally at least 10-15 years’ experience in the Financial Services Industry. The Pension/Retirement sector is desired.
• A proven track record for driving B2B partnerships and executing complex deals.
• Understanding and competence in prospecting, sales management, partnering, business development, account management and business growth.
• Customer-centric and commercial mindset.
• Outstanding organisational and leadership abilities.
• Outstanding communication and senior stakeholder management.
• Creative problem solver with strong planning and decision-making skills.
• Entrepreneurial attitude with the ability to succeed in a fast-paced work.
• Professional and accountable.
• Accepts and tackles demanding goals with enthusiasm.
• Educated to degree level.
• Fintech startup/scale up are very nice to have.

WHO WE ARE

We work in partnerships with governments and financial institutions in the UK and internationally. Our cloud-native digital platform is revolutionising how people around the world think about, and save for, their retirement. 

At heart, we’re a financial technology business. What we do is all about innovation, and using the power of digital change to put the customer first. Our Engineers will tell you that working at Smart gives you the opportunity to play your part in developing world-class technological solutions, working with – and learning from – like-minded people.

You’ll also find that, across our business, our colleagues love Smart’s culture, and how what we do means better financial outcomes for savers. That feels worthwhile, and it means that what we do, collectively, goes way beyond the nine to five of a typical working day.

Don’t just take our word for it – you can see what our colleagues say about working at Smart on LinkedIn Life and Glassdoor.

Benefits

At Smart, one of the eight principles we work to is “We want happy and good people in our team”. We created a list of benefits that helps us achieve this goal: 

• 25 days’ holiday per year, increasing with length of service.  
• £500 annual training budget to spend on your professional development 
• Extensive private healthcare, including dental, eyecare and EAP 
• Enhanced sick leave (three months’ pay per year)
• Enhanced maternity and paternity (maternity – 6 months fully paid/paternity – 3 weeks fully paid)
• Death in service insurance cover 
• Fully-paid five-week sabbatical after five years of employment
• In office wellbeing, such as manicures, massages and barbers. We also serve free lunch, breakfasts and social drinks weekly. 
• Smart employees also enjoy a 50% discount on orders from our sister company Arena Flowers, Britain's most ethical florist. They offer unique hand-tied bouquets, luxury flowers, letterbox flowers, plants and gifts to spend on friends and loved ones or even for yourself.

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We think Smart is an awesome place to work. If it sounds like somewhere you’d like to work, too, and if you’re ready to play your part in our continued success in the future, then naturally we’d love to meet you.