American Express—Manager – Compensation & Benefits (APAC)

Job description

Description: Role Purpose The Manager – Colleague Benefits Operations is responsible for leading and managing the end-to-end administration of colleague insurance, health, and retirement benefit programs in an APAC centric operating environment. The role requires expertise in people leadership, operational governance, and compliance with Indian and other APAC markets statutory and regulatory frameworks, while ensuring a consistent, accurate, and colleague-centric benefits experience. Requirements: Key Skills & Competencies - Expert people leadership and team management capabilities - Deep knowledge of APAC colleague benefits and statutory frameworks - Strong operational, analytical, and problem-solving skills - Proven experience managing vendors and third-party administrators - Ability to influence and collaborate with senior stakeholders - High attention to detail with a strong control mindset - Colleague-centric service orientation Qualifications & Experience - Masters degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Finance, or related field - 8–12 years of experience in colleague benefits operations or HR shared services, with significant India exposure - Demonstrated experience leading teams in a complex, high-volume environment - Hands-on experience with insurers, TPAs, pension trusts is highly desirable - Experience supporting audits and regulatory compliance in APAC is required Responsibilities: Key Responsibilities – APAC Benefits Operations & Delivery Benefits Operations & APAC Delivery - Lead end-to-end benefits operations and service delivery across APAC markets, ensuring consistent, accurate, and colleague-centric execution across diverse regulatory and benefits environments. - Oversee administration of market-specific benefits, including medical and life insurance, personal accident coverage, Social Security, retirement plans, flexible benefits, company car programs, loans, and other local benefits. - Ensure accurate and timely processing of enrollments, exits, dependent changes, claims coordination, life events, contributions, and benefit elections across APAC. - Establish regional service standards and ensure delivery against defined SLAs, quality, accuracy, and colleague experience metrics. - Partner with Payroll and Finance teams across APAC to ensure accurate deductions, contributions, reconciliations, funding, and statutory submissions. - Balance regional standardization with market-specific requirements, ensuring global and regional policies are operationalized appropriately within each country. Expert People Leadership - Provide strong regional leadership to benefits operations professionals supporting multiple APAC markets, establishing clear accountability, performance expectations, and service standards. - Coach, mentor, and develop team members to build deep benefits expertise, multi-market capability, leadership depth, and succession readiness. - Build an operating model that supports effective collaboration across countries, time zones, functions, and regional/global teams. - Lead teams through organizational change, process transformation, automation, technology implementation, vendor transitions, and policy changes. - Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, risk awareness, inclusion, and colleague empathy. Vendor & Stakeholder Management - Act as a senior operational owner for relationships with regional and in-country insurers, brokers, TPAs, Social Security and retirement plan administrators, trustees, fund managers, and other benefits service providers. - Establish consistent vendor governance and performance management frameworks across APAC, including SLA monitoring, service reviews, issue management, and escalation protocols. - Partner closely with HR, Total Rewards, Payroll, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Procurement, Risk, and HR Business Partners at market, regional, and global levels. - Support annual renewals, benefit plan reviews, vendor selections, contract negotiations, market transitions, and implementation of new or enhanced benefit programs. - Drive effective resolution of complex vendor and colleague escalations while identifying systemic opportunities for service improvement. Process Excellence & Regional Governance - Drive operational excellence across APAC through standardization, simplification, digitization, and automation of benefits processes. - Develop a scalable regional operating model while appropriately accommodating country-specific statutory, regulatory, and policy requirements. - Maintain robust SOPs, process maps, controls, governance standards, and documentation aligned with enterprise audit, compliance, and risk requirements. - Identify opportunities to reduce manual intervention, processing errors, turnaround times, operational costs, and colleague escalations. - Establish clear ownership and governance for processes spanning multiple markets, vendors, and internal teams. - Ensure appropriate data governance, confidentiality, privacy, access controls, and information-security standards across the APAC benefits ecosystem. Dashboard Reporting, Analytics & Metrics - Design and own APAC-wide operational dashboards and management reporting covering service volumes, turnaround times, accuracy, backlog, SLA performance, colleague escalations, vendor performance, and risk indicators. - Establish consistent KPIs and KRIs across markets while incorporating country-specific measures where required. - Analyze regional and market-level trends to identify service gaps, emerging risks, capacity requirements, control weaknesses, and improvement opportunities. - Provide actionable insights and regular performance updates to APAC and global senior leadership and governance forums. - Ensure data integrity and consistent definitions across HR systems, benefits platforms, payroll systems, vendors, and regional reporting. Risk Management & Operational Resilience - Lead identification, assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of operational risks across APAC benefits delivery. - Develop and maintain risk and control frameworks aligned with enterprise standards and applicable market requirements. - Conduct periodic risk assessments, control reviews, scenario analysis, and operational resilience exercises for critical benefits processes. - Identify dependencies and concentration risks across vendors, systems, processes, and key operational resources. - Maintain appropriate business continuity and contingency arrangements for critical benefits services across APAC. - Ensure critical colleague benefits can continue to be administered effectively during vendor, technology, workforce, or other operational disruptions. Operational Risk Events & Issue Management - Own and oversee the end-to-end management of benefits-related operational risk events across APAC, including identification, documentation, impact assessment, escalation, remediation, and closure. - Lead structured root cause analysis (RCA) and ensure effective preventive and corrective actions are implemented. - Establish regional visibility of risk events, near misses, control failures, recurring issues, and emerging operational risks. - Track remediation plans and report material issues through appropriate market, regional, and enterprise governance forums. - Ensure timely and sustainable closure of audit findings, compliance observations, control deficiencies, and risk actions. - Use risk-event insights to strengthen processes, controls, training, technology, and vendor governance across markets. Compliance, Risk & APAC Regulatory Framework - Ensure benefits operations comply with applicable employment, benefits, Social Security, retirement, tax, data privacy, and other regulatory requirements across APAC markets. - Establish a structured mechanism to monitor and operationalize regulatory and statutory changes affecting benefits administration across the region. - Partner with Legal, Compliance, Tax, Payroll, Risk, and local HR teams to interpret regulatory requirements and translate them into operational processes and controls. - Ensure timely and accurate statutory filings, Social Security and retirement contributions, reporting, reconciliations, and regulatory submissions, where applicable. - Support internal audits, statutory audits, regulatory reviews, and compliance assessments across APAC markets. - Proactively identify and mitigate regulatory, operational, compliance, data, financial, and third-party risks. - Maintain appropriate evidence, documentation, and controls to demonstrate ongoing regulatory compliance and audit readiness across the region. APAC Delivery Strategy & Transformation - Define and execute the APAC Benefits Operations delivery strategy, aligned with broader Total Rewards, HR, and enterprise priorities. - Develop a scalable regional delivery model that creates the right balance between centralized operations, market expertise, and vendor-supported delivery. - Build a roadmap for process harmonization, automation, digital enablement, self-service, and operational efficiency. - Partner with global and regional stakeholders on benefits technology implementations, platform migrations, vendor consolidations, and operating-model transformations. - Establish mechanisms to share best practices and lessons learned across APAC markets, reducing unnecessary process variation. - Continuously assess the maturity of APAC benefits operations and develop initiatives that strengthen service quality, colleague experience, controls, resilience, and scalability.