Product Owner: Life Product System (OIPA)

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Job Description

The Product Owner – Life Product System (OIPA) is responsible for consolidating and managing business demand for the OIPA platform across OMAR markets, ensuring the platform roadmap and delivery sequencing maximise enterprise value. This is a business product owner role (not a technology ownership role). The role works closely with the CoE delivery team to shape and execute priorities, while the Life Product Expert owns the strategic direction for the OIPA platform.

The Product Owner – Life Product System (OIPA) is responsible for consolidating and managing business demand for the OIPA platform across OMAR markets, ensuring the platform roadmap and delivery sequencing maximise enterprise value. This is a business product owner role (not a technology ownership role). The role works closely with the CoE delivery team to shape and execute priorities, while the Life Product Expert owns the strategic direction for the OIPA platform.

RESPONSIBILITIES

OIPA Platform Business Strategy

• Engage and align with Life Product Expert and countries on the strategic direction for the OIPA Platform.

• Support the development of the OIPA Platform Business Strategy

Cross-country demand aggregation and shaping (business requirements)

• Aggregate and clarify requests from markets into a single enterprise view, ensuring requirements are complete and outcomes focused.

• Challenge duplication and unnecessary customisation to protect platform standardisation and sustainability.

• Maintain a clear rationale for items that are accepted, deferred or removed.

Prioritisation, trade-offs, and decision facilitation

• Consolidate requests into a single enterprise view and prioritise work based on regulatory deadlines, revenue/value impact, risk, and delivery constraints.

• Facilitate decision-making and trade-offs across markets when priorities conflict.

• Maintain transparency of prioritisation rationale, dependencies, sequencing and roadmap implications.

Backlog ownership and governance

• Maintain a clear, structured OIPA backlog.

• Ensure backlog hygiene through regular refinement and removal of outdated items.

Release planning and delivery alignment (with the CoE)

• Work closely with the CoE delivery team on sprint and release planning, sequencing and readiness.

• Identify and manage cross-market dependencies and risks early to protect predictable delivery.

Stakeholder alignment and communication

• Facilitate regular cross-country forums to align on strategy, roadmap, priorities, and progress.

• Maintain effective stakeholder communication, including status, risks, decisions required, and expected outcomes.

• Act as a bridge between business stakeholders and technology teams to ensure shared understanding and timely decisions.

Agile participation and continuous improvement

• Participate in Agile ceremonies, including PI planning and sprint reviews.

• Support continuous improvement in ways of working, backlog quality, and delivery effectiveness.

Promote system usage

• Link countries together in terms of lessons learned, and good practices

• Promote system usage across countries or in markets where the system is not used or under-used.

• Own benefits realisation (ensuring the system and processes are adequately embedded

• Escalate any system related issues that may impact adoption.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS (REQUIRED FOR THE JOB)

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration or Financial field.

ADDITIONAL QUALIFICATIONS/EXPERIENCE (PREFERRED, NOT A REQUIREMENT)

• Agile certification (for example, Professional Scrum Product Owner or equivalent) is advantageous.

• Project Management qualification is advantageous.

• Life insurance experience is strongly preferred.

EXPERIENCE (REQUIRED FOR THE JOB)

• Experience in an a product ownership/product management (or a closely related role) in a cross-functional environment.

• Demonstrated experience in Project Management (managing product backlogs, facilitating prioritisation decisions, and driving stakeholder alignment).

• Experience working across multiple business units / markets is advantageous.

• Appreciation of software development life cycles (SDLC) is an advantage.

Skills

Adaptive Thinking, Business Requirements Analysis, Commercial Acumen, Creative Design, Current State Analysis, Customer Analytics, Market Analysis, Negotiation, Oral Communications, Presentation Preparations, Presentation Techniques, Presenting Solutions, Product Development, Strategic Planning, User Experience (UX) Design

Competencies

Education

NQF Level 9 – Masters

Closing Date

21 May 2026 , 23:59

The appointment will be made from the designated group in line with the Employment Equity Plan of Old Mutual South Africa and the specific business unit in question.

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