Head of Advisory

About the Role
The purpose of this role is to establish the company Advisory as a trusted, high-growth regional partner for insurance-sector boards, executive teams, regulators, and investors. This involves developing commercially relevant propositions, expanding strategic client relationships, and consistently delivering measurable outcomes.

Job Description

A. Business Strategy, P&L and Growth

• Define and execute the Advisory business strategy, annual business plan, and three-year growth roadmap in alignment with the Group’s priorities.
• Own the practice P&L, including revenue, gross margin, utilization, headcount, operating costs, working capital, and collections.
• Build a focused portfolio of repeatable, high-value offerings and determine where the company should lead, partner, or use external specialists.
• Translate market opportunities into a disciplined pipeline, account plans, and achievable sales and delivery forecasts.
• Prepare regular performance reports and recommendations for the Group CEO and Executive Committee.

B. Business Development and Client Origination

• Originate and convert new assignments through personal market credibility, executive relationships, referrals, partnerships, and targeted campaigns.
• Develop trusted relationships with board members, CEOs, C-suite executives, regulators, investors, and other senior stakeholders across the GCC.
• Lead client discovery, opportunity qualification, proposal development, commercial structuring, pricing, negotiation, and contracting.
• Grow key accounts through structured relationship plans, cross-selling, and the identification of follow-on opportunities.
• Maintain clear pipeline discipline, including probability-weighted forecasting, next actions, ownership, and conversion analysis.

C. Client Leadership and Delivery Excellence

• Act as executive sponsor for strategic engagements and remain accountable for outcomes, quality, client confidence, and commercial performance.
• Convert complex client issues into clear hypotheses, workplans, governance arrangements, decision papers, and implementable recommendations.
• Establish rigorous engagement controls covering scope, milestones, budget, resourcing, risks, dependencies, change requests, and billing.
• Ensure that deliverables meet leading consulting standards and are practical, evidence-based, and tailored to the GCC insurance environment.
• Intervene early where engagements are at risk, resolve escalations professionally, and capture lessons learned.

D. Service Portfolio and Intellectual Capital

• Develop and lead offerings across insurance strategy and growth, operating-model and performance transformation, claims and profitability improvement, regulatory and licensing advisory, governance and risk, digital and AI-enabled transformation, M&A and post-merger integration, restructuring and run-off, and feasibility and business planning.
• Create methodologies, diagnostic tools, proposal assets, case studies, and quality standards that improve differentiation and delivery efficiency.
• Produce relevant thought leadership and represent the company at selected industry forums, roundtables, webinars, and media opportunities.
• Maintain current knowledge of insurance-market developments, regulatory change, emerging technologies, and competitor activity across the region.

E. People, Capability and Culture

• Design the target organization and resource model for the practice, balancing senior client leadership, core delivery capability, and specialist expertise.
• Recruit, coach, and retain a high-performing team with clear objectives, development plans, succession coverage, and performance accountability.
• Build scalable delivery capacity, including effective use of India-based or other offshore resources where appropriate, while protecting quality and client confidentiality.
• Create a collaborative, inclusive, and high-integrity culture that combines commercial ambition with professional judgement and accountability.
• Ensure appropriate utilization, workload management, knowledge sharing, and continuing professional development.

F. Governance, Risk, and Group Collaboration

• Apply robust engagement acceptance, conflict, independence, confidentiality, data-protection, subcontractor, and quality-review controls.
• Ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulatory requirements, Group policies, and contractual obligations in each market.
• Work closely with the company’s Insurance, Claims, Assistance, and Digital businesses to create integrated solutions without compromising advisory objectivity.
• Build and manage a reliable network of subject-matter experts, alliance partners, and subcontractors, with clear accountability for quality and economics.

Priority Advisory Domains

• Strategy & growth: Corporate and business-unit strategy, market entry, distribution, product and portfolio strategy, customer value propositions.
• Transformation: Target operating models, process redesign, cost and performance improvement, change management, and implementation support.
• Claims & technical: Claims transformation, leakage and recovery reviews, loss-ratio improvement, underwriting and technical operations.
• Transactions: Commercial and operational due diligence, M&A support, post-merger integration, restructuring, run-off, and market exit.
• Regulatory & governance: Licensing, regulatory remediation, governance, risk, compliance, and board/executive advisory.
• Digital & analytics: Digital strategy, automation, data and analytics, AI use cases, InsurTech partnerships, and technology-enabled operating change.

Performance Expectations
Detailed annual targets will be agreed with the Group CEO and Executive Committee. Performance will be assessed through a balanced scorecard covering the following outcomes:

• Commercial performance: Revenue, gross margin, collections, utilization, and performance against approved budget.
• Market development: Qualified pipeline, proposal conversion, new strategic accounts, account expansion, and strength of senior relationships.
• Client impact: Client satisfaction, repeat business, referenceability, measurable engagement outcomes, and effective escalation management.
• Delivery quality: Milestone and budget performance, quality-review results, scope control, and risk management.
• Business building: Priority offerings launched, reusable intellectual capital, alliances, and market visibility.
• People leadership: Critical hires, retention, capability development, succession, engagement, and productive deployment of the team.
• Governance: Compliance with engagement acceptance, conflict, confidentiality, contracting, data-protection, and quality requirements.

First-12 Months Priorities

• Complete a fact-based review of the existing Advisory portfolio, pipeline, delivery model, capabilities, and economics; agree the strategic priorities and operating model.
• Present and secure approval for a three-year practice plan, annual budget, market and account priorities, service portfolio, talent plan, and delivery model.
• Build a qualified opportunity pipeline and establish a consistent cadence for account management, proposals, forecasting, and collections.
• Strengthen governance and quality controls across all active engagements and implement a clear project and portfolio reporting framework.
• Win and successfully mobilize priority assignments that demonstrate the company’s differentiated insurance expertise and create referenceable outcomes.
• Recruit or deploy the critical leadership and delivery capabilities required to execute the approved plan, including scalable offshore support where appropriate.

Qualifications and Experience

• Education:
  • Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, economics, insurance, engineering, or another relevant discipline; a master’s degree or MBA is preferred.
  • Relevant professional credentials—such as ACII, FCII, CPCU, actuarial qualifications, CFA, CPA/CA, CISA, PMP, or recognized change/transformation certification—are advantageous where relevant to the candidate’s specialism.
• Professional Experience:
  • Typically 15+ years of relevant professional experience, including substantial experience in management consulting or advisory and at least five years in senior leadership roles.
  • Current or recent experience at Director, Executive Director or equivalent level in a Big Four firm, recognized management consultancy, specialist insurance advisory business, or comparable professional-services organization is strongly preferred.
  • Demonstrated insurance-sector depth across one or more of general insurance, life and health, takaful, reinsurance, broking, or claims, supported by a broad understanding of the insurance value chain.
  • Strong knowledge of GCC insurance markets and regulatory environments; a credible regional executive network and prior GCC/MENA consulting experience are highly desirable.
  • Proven record of personally originating and converting material advisory engagements, growing key accounts, and managing a profitable portfolio or practice.
  • Track record of leading complex, multi-workstream engagements from diagnosis through implementation, with board and C-suite exposure.
  • Experience building teams, deploying mixed onshore/offshore delivery models, and managing specialist partners or subcontractors.

Leadership Capabilities

• Entrepreneurial practice builder with strong commercial judgement and the discipline to convert strategy into results.
• Credible executive presence and the ability to advise, influence, and challenge boards, regulators, and senior management constructively.
• Excellent problem structuring, analytical thinking, storytelling, proposal writing, and presentation skills.
• Hands-on leadership style: equally comfortable originating work, shaping a solution, reviewing deliverables, and resolving delivery issues.
• High standards of integrity, independence, discretion, and professional judgement.
• Collaborative and culturally aware, with the resilience and adaptability required in a growing regional business.
• Fluent business English is essential; Arabic is advantageous. The successful candidate must be willing to be based in Bahrain and travel regularly across the GCC.