Operating Model Integration Lead (12 months temporary contract)

Location: Madrid, M, ES

Are you a strategic thinker with a talent for transforming complex operational challenges into seamless solutions? Join our team at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions and lead a critical integration that will shape our future operating landscape. This is your opportunity to drive meaningful change at the intersection of strategy and execution in a global commercial insurance environment.

About the Role

As the Operating Model Integration Lead, you will play a central role in a strategic, multi-phase integration of a newly acquired business into Swiss Re Corporate Solutions (CorSo). Upon successful completion, the acquisition will strengthen our primary credit and surety insurance offering and expand our capabilities to address the risk management needs of our clients worldwide.  

The Operating Model Integration Lead is key to the success of this investment, responsible for leading a carefully phased integration to ensure business continuity while enabling scalable long-term growth. You will work with other functional and business partners to oversee development and refinement of a unified, sustainable, and resilient future-state operating model while maintaining effective work delivery throughout the Transition and Integration phases. This role sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and governance, ensuring that integration decisions are translated into predictable and executable operating outcomes across functions and geographies.

Reporting to the Head of Operational Model Excellence for Credit & Surety, you will work closely with underwriting, operations, technology, legal, finance, and other internal stakeholders across a multiyear time horizon. This is a high-visibility role with meaningful exposure to senior stakeholders across functions and regions, offering the opportunity to shape a critical integration initiative and influence CorSo’s long-term operating model evolution.

Key Responsibilities

Operating Model Design and Governance

• Lead the development and refinement of the future-state operating model across Underwriting, Operations, Finance, Technical Accounting, and Shared Services
• Translate integration objectives into structured operational processes, governance frameworks, service models, systems connectivity requirements, and execution roadmaps
• Propose decision rights, accountabilities, and cross-functional hand-offs; drive alignment and secure required approvals
• Ensure consistency with CorSo standards, control frameworks, and risk appetite
• Embed appropriate documentation, operational controls, and governance discipline into the target-state design

Transition and Integration Execution

• Drive coordination of activities needed to maintain business continuity during Transition
• Develop and implement interim processes to bridge legacy and target-state environments
• Ensure operational readiness across integration milestones and lifecycle phases
• Identify operational and control risks and mitigation strategies; escalate structural issues where required
• Support regulatory, compliance, audit, and transitional service arrangement requirements

Cross-Functional and Stakeholder Leadership

• Act as the Operating Model lead within the broader integration program
• Drive structured collaboration across Technology, Data, Finance, Risk, Regional Operations, external partners, and internal SMEs
• Validate assumptions, clarify operational requirements, and assess feasibility of proposed design decisions across functions and geographies
• Align diverse stakeholders across functions and geographies around a unified end-state vision and practical execution plan

About You

You are a structured strategic thinker who thrives in complex, high-ambiguity environments. You combine analytical rigor with execution discipline and are comfortable operating across organizational boundaries. You are able to move between big-picture operating model design and detailed execution planning while maintaining clarity, pace, and control discipline.

Key Requirements:

• Experience leading significant workstreams for integrations, acquisitions, or carve-outs at scale, ideally within financial services or similarly complex regulated environment

• Proven track record in operating model design, business integration, or large-scale transformation, including process optimization or operational excellence initiatives

• Strong cross-functional program or project management skills

• Demonstrated ability to analyse complex problems, structure realistic solutions, manage ambiguity, and communicate clearly

• Experience with multiple underwriting and policy admin systems and process environments

• Excellent communication skills and influence leaders across functions and cultures

• Adept at working within complex, matrixed, global environments

• Familiarity with credit and surety or other commercial insurance operations and workflows preferred but not required

This role requires travel up to 20-30% to sites in the UK, Europe, Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand during initial phases. Travel requirements will reduce over time.

Our company has a hybrid work model where the expectation is that you will be in the office at least three days per week. The base salary range for this position will be shared with you during the interview process.