The Senior Product Manager is responsible for managing products throughout the product lifecycle, gathering and prioritizing product and member requirements, defining the product vision, and managing cross functional teams to deliver winning products and ensure product line sustainability. The Senior Product Manager's job also includes ensuring that the product supports the company's overall strategic vision and performance goals. A successful Senior Product Manager manages the credit union’s product offerings to ensure the credit union achieves its growth, yield, and risk management goals.
The Senior Product Manager is critical in the roles of interviewing, selecting and hiring of new team members. Additionally, Senior Product Managers have the responsibility mentor, train, conduct performance evaluations and one-on-ones, and direct the efforts of staff to ensure production levels and credit union performance is met.
1. Strategic Management
a. Establish and drive short-, and long-term strategic plans and objectives ensuring organizational strategies are aligned.
b. Create analytical infrastructure to aid in rapid turnaround of recommendations on evolving strategic challenges
c. Advise management on underwriting and lending practice changes.
d. Maintain product forecast including growth, revenue and expenses, to be used by various business functions.
e. Develop and drive compelling product and revenue generating strategies.
f. Prepare business cases with careful attention to credit union member impact.
g. Mitigate risk by monitoring and responding to underwriting guidelines, write-offs, delinquency, and the economy.
h. Manage Product Lifecycle by gathering and prioritizing product and member requirements.
i. Ensure product line sustainability and define product vision.
j. Identify, prepare business case, and execute underserved field of membership expansion to facilitate growth opportunities.
k. Develop tools, processes and product solutions across product categories.
2. Pricing
a. Create and optimize pricing models with strategic goals of the credit union.
b. Establish and maintain pricing for multi-billion-dollar loan portfolios.
c. Define and ensure optimum market share/yield ratios are met.
d. Provide recommendations and supporting analysis on an ongoing basis.
e. Lead strategic pricing initiatives to optimize member satisfaction and revenue requirements.
f. Evaluate and direct pricing models to reflect the risk profile.
g. Determine and apply regional pricing based on market and yield requirements.
h. Develop price elasticity models for all and products.
i. Create complex pricing models to guide product pricing decisions.
j. Convert pricing theory and strategy into strong business plans, increased market share, and greater revenue.
k. Innovate analytical methodologies for an increasingly sophisticated pricing model
3. Research
a. Analyze market trends using primary and secondary research to develop key value propositions.
b. Scrutinize competitors and advise Senior Management how to effectively position against them.
c. Be the market and technical subject matter expert within the organization for assigned products.
d. Report on product performance, including creating and maintaining technical and financial dashboards.
e. Measure product awareness with members and target market.
f. Perform market and product research; use finding in SWOT analysis.
g. Investigate and resolve matters of significance on behalf of management.
h. Implement increasingly sophisticated analytical methodologies.
i. Use Structured Query Language (SQL) Tableau, and other data engines to produce actionable data analysis.
4. Product Innovation
a. Develop and justify product modifications and improvements.
b. Build and launch products and/or product features.
c. Drive product and process innovation and automation to deliver highly scalable and profitable solutions.
d. Oversee and function as the owner of product innovation activity, including:
• Managing pricing, term, collateral, operational behavior, and product attributes.
• Obtaining senior management acceptance.
• Reporting on status and metrics on a periodic basis.
e. Develop and drive compelling, differentiated product strategies, leading cross-functional teams.
f. Create Market Requirement Documents and Product Requirement Documents with prioritized features and corresponding justification.
g. Prepare and ensure adherence to business cases, requirements documents and product roadmaps.
h. Ensure the user experience and business requirements are fully represented during the product design process.
i. Accountable to users for feature sets, navigation, quality, and overall experience.
5. Interaction with Others
a. Advise senior management on product value propositions.
b. Consult with senior management on product innovation, pricing, and strategy to meet credit union objectives.
c. Lead cross-functional teams on product risk management, pricing, growth and yield.
d. Negotiate third party contracts.
e. Bridge every department that touches the product.
f. Function as project manager to ensure products are completed on time and requirements are met.
g. Distil relevant information from complex and in-depth analysis and present it Sr. Management.
h. Be the authoritative source of product-related information, including definition, policies, and pricing..
i. Oversee the creation, compilation, and improvement of product performance reporting to Credit Union Leadership.
j. Direct Product Managers on optimal pricing models and strategies.
k. Supervise Product Managers, Product Analysts II, and Product Analysts I by:
• Conducting one-on-ones
• Administering performance evaluations
• Overseeing scheduling
• Participating in corrective action
• Assigning tasks, deadlines and goals
Training/Education/Certification:
• Bachelor’s degree in business or related field required.
• Master’s degree preferred.
Required Knowledge:
• Knowledge of Credit Union products, services, policies, and procedures.
• Understanding of market pressures that drive product performance.
• Extensive knowledge of statistics and related computer applications and financial and market indicators.
• Proficient in Structured Query Language (SQL), Tableau, R Studio, and Python.
Experience Required:
• Eight Plus years in product management or related field, preferably in a financial institution.
Skills/Abilities:
• Demonstrate success defining and launching excellent products.
• Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams.
• Able to distil relevant information, communicate ideas, and present findings in public speaking environments
• Outstanding abstract, analytical, critical, and creative thinking abilities.
• Negotiation expertise.
• Strong leadership, decision making, problem solving, communication, and project management skills.
• Proficient in Tableau, Excel, PowerPoint