SENIOR PRODUCT OWNER

(Full Time, Salary, Exempt)

Looking to join a growing company dedicated to helping others? We offer that, plus competitive salaries, a culture of learning, and a fast-paced environment. This is a hybrid position with 3 days in-office. Join our team to help make a difference in the lives of others! 

About Continental General:

The Continental General family of companies has provided insurance, including life and long-term care policies, to individuals and groups for over 30 years, and currently supports over 200,000 policyholders. Both our insurance company, Continental General Insurance Company, and our third-party administrator, Continental General Services, are committed to the continuous development of our infrastructure, processes, and people. The group is actively growing through expansion of both its insurance portfolio and its administrative services. With each opportunity, we take a collaborative approach to address challenges and provide unique solutions.

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Position Summary
We are seeking a highly skilled and dynamic Agile Product Owner to join our Finance & Valuation domain team supporting our fast-growing TPA (Third-Party Administration) organization. The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the business value delivered by the Finance & Valuation delivery team, which supports statutory and GAAP financial reporting, reinsurance accounting and reporting, banking integrations, and valuation data extracts for internal and external stakeholders.

In this role, you will leverage deep expertise in life insurance, annuity, and health insurance financial operations, actuarial valuation processes, and agile methodologies. As the owner of the Finance & Valuation domain, you will translate complex actuarial, accounting, treasury, and regulatory requirements into actionable, development-ready work and ensure successful delivery of key financial reporting and valuation capabilities. You will work closely with Actuarial, Finance, Accounting, IT, reinsurance teams, and external clients to manage dependencies, address risks, and maintain seamless business continuity across financial cycles, reporting, and project deadlines.

Key Responsibilities

1. Backlog Ownership & Flow Management

• Leverage demonstrable product ownership experience to clearly articulate and communicate the Finance & Valuation product vision and feature roadmap to the team, ensuring alignment with organizational strategy, business standards, and financial reporting objectives.
• Act as the primary point of contact for the Finance & Valuation solutions delivery team on product requirements, scope, and priorities, including providing mentorship to other Product Owners and business analysts while supporting key stakeholders.
• Own and lead the prioritization of the Finance & Valuation backlog; facilitate ongoing backlog refinement to ensure clarity, readiness, and proper sizing of work items - with particular attention to finance and valuation cycle deadlines, reporting, reinsurance treaty requirements, and project deadlines.
• Collaborate with actuarial, finance, accounting, banking, and technology stakeholders to break down initiatives into epics, features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria tied to financial accuracy and regulatory compliance.
• Review, accept, or reject completed work based on defined acceptance criteria, reconciliation results, and overall product expectations.
• Be readily available to the team, actively participating in daily Kanban/flow meetings and removing roadblocks to maintain smooth throughput.
• Participate in and/or lead Kanban/Agile ceremonies, such as backlog replenishment, daily flow reviews, and regular retrospectives to improve how work moves through the system.  Actively facilitate updating processes according to information found in retrospectives.

2. Stakeholder Collaboration

• Partner with actuarial, finance, accounting, reinsurance, banking, project management, and external stakeholders to align priorities within the Finance & Valuation solutions delivery team and across related initiatives.
• Communicate product progress, risks, decisions, and changes to stakeholders at all levels in a timely and transparent manner appropriate to each recipient.
• Facilitate discussions around dependencies, vendor involvement (e.g., policy admin system software vendors, reinsurers), and cross-team coordination, including alignment with other Product Owners on upstream/downstream data dependencies.
• Continuously iterate on the product based on stakeholder input, audit findings, regulatory changes, opportunities for streamlining processes, and data-driven insights.

3. Compliance and Risk Management

• Ensure that development activities adhere to regulatory requirements, industry standards, and internal company policies
• Maintain awareness of and alignment with state and federal insurance regulations applicable to the product.
• Identify and escalate risks related to compliance, customer impact, or operational stability, and support mitigation planning.
• Support audit readiness by ensuring traceability of logic changes, maintaining documentation of business rules, and facilitating compliance requirements.

4. Domain-Specific Expertise

• Maintain working knowledge of finance and valuation platforms and tools used in the domain (e.g., valuation engines, data warehouses, reconciliation tools, premium tax account systems).
• Understand relationships between policy administration system data and downstream system impacts, particularly the reporting and accounting systems.

5. Continuous Improvement and Performance

• Develop and maintain product performance monitoring frameworks using key metrics such as extract accuracy rates, reconciliation pass rates, reporting timeliness, defect rates, and stakeholder satisfaction - and use data to drive product and process enhancements.
• Partner with tech leads to improve flow efficiency, reduce bottlenecks in pipelines, and enhance data quality.
• Stay current on Kanban and Agile practices, life insurance and insurance industry trends, regulatory changes, and emerging technologies that can improve the product and the team’s workflow.
• Demonstrate innovative thought by identifying opportunities to streamline through automation or AI - particularly in data reconciliation, extract generation, and valuation quality assurance - and then drive to completion.

Required Skills

• Leadership and Communication:
  • Ability to effectively present at, and lead, internal meetings and project discussions.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead and influence cross-functional teams even without direct reporting authority.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to explain complex topics to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Strong interpersonal and organizational skills; able to manage expectations and build trust with stakeholders at all levels.
• Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills:
  • Strong analytical mindset with a focus on delivering measurable business value and customer-centered features.
  • Ability to translate complex insurance concepts and regulatory requirements into clear, actionable work items for development teams.