Director Product Management - Risk Management

Job description

We exist for workers and their employers -- who are the backbone of our economy. That is where Centivo comes in -- our mission is to bring affordable, high-quality healthcare to the millions who struggle to pay their healthcare bills. Summary of Role: The Director of Product Management, Risk Management owns our stop loss and captive product portfolio. This means defining how risk is structured, priced, and transferred across our book and turning that expertise into products that give self-funded employers a smarter, more sustainable way to manage their exposure. You'll lead the full lifecycle of our risk products: program design, captive strategy, underwriting alignment, reinsurance structure, and ongoing performance management. You'll work across product, underwriting, actuarial, finance, and network teams — and you'll represent Centivo's risk capabilities externally with brokers, consultants, and industry partners. This is not a generalist PM role. We're looking for someone who has built and managed stop loss and captive programs, knows the mechanics of quota share structures, and can move fluently between product strategy and technical underwriting conversations. If you've spent your career at a stop loss carrier, MGU, or the risk division of a health plan — and you're ready to build something that actually changes how employers think about risk — we'd like to talk. Responsibilities Include: Stop Loss & Captive Product Ownership: Own the full lifecycle of Centivo's stop loss and captive product offerings — from program structure and feature design through launch, iteration, and ongoing performance management. Define and maintain product specifications for specific stop loss coverage, aggregate stop loss, and captive arrangements, ensuring terms, attachment points, and program features are competitive and financially sound. Lead the evaluation and design of level funding, minimum premium, and partial self-funding structures as differentiated market offerings. Risk Product Roadmap Development: Build and maintain a prioritized product roadmap for the risk management domain that balances underwriting discipline with market competitiveness. Translate emerging trends in stop loss, reinsurance, and captive markets into actionable product initiatives. Make and defend trade-off decisions between features, risk appetite, and time-to-market in partnership with underwriting, actuarial, and finance stakeholders. Underwriting & Financial Program Design: Partner with underwriting to develop and refine risk selection criteria, pricing frameworks, and program structures — including layered and quota share approaches. Define product guardrails that support sound underwriting outcomes while giving sales and client management the flexibility to compete effectively. Evaluate and recommend cost mitigation strategies, including network performance levers and benefit design changes that reduce stop loss exposure. Captive Program Strategy: Lead product strategy for captive program creation, management, and redesign. Define the criteria and structure for new captive formations, assess performance of existing captives, and drive product changes that optimize outcomes for captive members. Serve as the internal subject matter expert on captive mechanics, governance requirements, and financial performance levers. Reinsurance & External Risk Partnerships: Define product requirements for reinsurance arrangements that support Centivo's risk portfolio. Evaluate reinsurance structure options and in partnership with finance and actuarial to ensure program designs are appropriately protected. Maintain awareness of the provider reinsurance landscape as an adjacent opportunity. Cross-Functional Alignment on Risk Products: Work across finance, underwriting, actuarial, network and teams to ensure risk product designs are operationally viable and financially modeled accurately. Translate complex stop loss and captive mechanics into clear requirements for technology and operations teams. Communicate product strategy and performance to executive leadership and board-level stakeholders when relevant. Market Intelligence & Competitive Positioning: Monitor the stop loss carrier, MGU, and captive market landscape. Identify structural shifts in how risk is being transferred, priced, or shared — and translate those signals into product opportunities or defensive responses. Benchmark Centivo's risk products against competitors across coverage terms, pricing structures, and program features. KPIs & Portfolio Performance: Define the metrics that indicate healthy risk product performance — loss ratios, attachment point adequacy, captive funding levels, renewal rates, and cost mitigation program effectiveness — and use them to drive ongoing product decisions. Surface performance trends and recommend product adjustments proactively rather than reactively. External Representation: Represent Centivo's risk management product capabilities externally with brokers, consultants, reinsurers, and at industry forums. Build credibility in the stop loss and captive market as a product leader who understands both the technical mechanics and the market dynamics. Qualifications: Experience & Background • Bachelor's degree in mathematics, finance, underwriting, actuarial science, or a related quantitative field; advanced degree preferred • 5 years of experience in stop loss, captive, or a closely related risk domain • 5 years in product management or a related role, with a proven track record of taking products from concept through launch and scale • Direct experience at a stop loss carrier, MGU, or the stop loss division of a health plan Product Management Skills • Demonstrated ability to launch and scale innovative, customer-centric products that create durable competitive advantage • Strong grasp of user experience principles, market trend analysis, and competitive assessment • Able to communicate product vision and strategy clearly — to an underwriter, an engineer, and a CEO, without changing what you're actually saying • Skilled at building consensus across stakeholders with competing priorities, and comfortable making and defending trade-off decisions • Familiar with product management tools, metrics, and adoption methodologies; working knowledge of agile development processes Risk Domain Expertise • 5 years of hands-on experience with stop loss and captive program design and implementation • Deep knowledge of captive creation, ongoing management, and redesign; level funding programs; and other financial structures including minimum premium and partial self-funding • Strong working knowledge of layered and quota share approaches, reinsurance mechanics, stop loss underwriting, cost mitigation strategies, network performance, and benefit design • Experience with self funded plans is required; fully insured or provider reinsurance arrangements is a plus Leadership Skills: • Business Acumen – A keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with a business situation (risks and opportunities) in a manner that is likely to lead to a good outcome. Critical to this is an ability to think beyond their own function. • Accountability & Execution – Taking ownership of actions, following through on commitments, actively carrying out tasks, monitoring progress, delivering results as promised, and being answerable for positive and negative outcomes. • Executive Presence - The combination of gravitas, charisma and trust/authenticity that shows up as a calm, confident demeanor and that is behind the ability to have impact, influence others and achieve desired outcomes within Centivo and with external stakeholders. o Gravitas - the ability to combine expertise, knowledge and depth of understanding to be credible in a given area. o Charisma - the ability to build rapport, tell and story and "hold a room" o Empathy/Humility - the ability to put oneself in the shoes of others, listen to others, understand others needs and be attentive to their feelings and thoughts, to build trust and an authentic connection to others. • Strategist Mindset - The ability see and articulate the bigger picture, thinking proactively and anticipating both opportunities and obstacles in the context of setting direction and maintain alignment to long-term company goals. o Systems Thinking – The ability to see and articulate the patterns, interconnections and interdependencies within a system o Process Orientation – The ability to see and articulate the sequential flow of activities, including anticipating impacts upstream and downstream when processes are changed. o Flexibility/Working through Ambiguity – Tendency to be energized by new experiences/perspectives, working with both data and fragmented information to arrive at practical, effective, actionable next steps. Leadership Behaviors • Communicate – Managers discuss the company’s vision and strategies, the department’s direction and goals, and in times of crisis, what we know and don’t know to make sure team members know what they need to know. • Clarify – As managers, it’s up to us to clarify what good looks like. What do we expect? What do our clients, customers or colleagues need? If our teams are not performing as expected, managers must clarify expectations and ensure understanding. • Coach – Managers provide recognition and feedback; help team members find solutions to challenges; amplify good and filter weaker aspects of organizational culture and the work as they coach employees in their day-to-day performance and their growth and career development. • Connect – Managers help our teams see their collective purpose and how their work connects to the greater whole. We connect people within our company and network. Centivo Values: • Resilient – This is wicked hard. There is no easy button for healthcare affordability. Luckily, the mission makes it worth it and sustains us when things are tough. Being resilient ensures we don’t give up. • Uncommon - The status quo stinks so we had to go out and build something better. We know the healthcare system. It isn't working for members, employers, and providers. So we're building it from scratch, from the ground up. Our focus is on making things better for them while also improving clinical results - which is bold and uncommon. • Positive – We care about each other. It takes energy to do hard stuff, build something better and to be resilient and unconventional while doing it. Because of that, we make sure we give kudos freely and feedback with care. When our tank gets low, a team member is there to be a source of new energy. We celebrate together. We are supportive, generous, humble, and positive. Work Location: • This position is remote eligible Who we are: Centivo is an innovative health plan for self-funded employers on a mission to bring affordable, high-quality healthcare to the millions who struggle to pay their healthcare bills. Anchored around a primary care based ACO model, Centivo saves employers 15 to 30 percent compared to traditional insurance carriers. Employees also realize significant savings through our free primary care (including virtual), predictable copay and no-deductible benefit plan design. Centivo works with employers ranging in size from 51 employees to Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit centivo.com http://centivo.com. Headquartered in Buffalo, NY with offices in New York City and Buffalo, Centivo is backed by leading healthcare and technology investors, including a recent round of investment from Morgan Health, a business unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co.