Senior Manager, Research & Insights

The Opportunity  Lead the Research and Insights function for one of Canada’s leading insurers. Reporting to the Vice President, Customer, you will oversee all customer research and insights activities, helping shape how we understand our customers and broker partners. As part of the Customer leadership team—alongside Customer Analytics, Customer Strategy, and Customer Experience—you will play a key role in ensuring insights are embedded in business decisions across the organization.
What you’ll do  Research Leadership:
Lead all B2C and B2B research efforts across the organization, including complex, cross-functional NPS and customer research initiatives with enterprise‑level impact across multiple locations and business functions. Provide expert guidance on qualitative, quantitative, emerging techniques, and the evolving use of AI in research. Oversee and advise on major research initiatives, including text analytics to complement survey findings, liaise between external research partners and internal collaborators, and manage the full research lifecycle—questionnaire design, methodological planning, data analysis, synthesis, and reporting.

Deliver ongoing internal tracking studies, ensuring tools and questionnaires evolve to reflect business needs and measure performance against targets. Engage deeply with each area of the business to understand research needs, uncover opportunities, and recommend the right approaches with curiosity and enthusiasm. Prioritize research initiatives within finite budgets and resources, manage and evaluate research vendors, and ensure quality and value.
Insights Storytelling:
Transform research into actionable insights that influence decisions at every level. Champion the role of customer and broker insights in shaping key business strategies. Leverage creative and strategic thinking to create new research solutions for complex, unprecedented business questions. Integrate and synthesize findings from multiple data sources to identify strategic opportunities and make recommendations. Deliver clear, concise, and compelling insights—primarily through PowerPoint presentations—tailored to a variety of partner audiences.

Guide the team in elevating the quality of insights, enhancing clarity, and building strong narratives that resonate with business leaders.
Stakeholder Management:
Operate effectively within a matrix organization and build strong cross‑functional relationships. Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders, regularly shaping key decisions through data‑driven customer and NPS insights. Deliver regular reporting and presentations to senior partners, engage and align multiple partners with varying priorities, and adapt to diverse personalities and situations with professionalism and emotional intelligence. Work closely with senior leaders (VP+) to understand their business challenges and provide meaningful, valuable insights.

Serve as the primary Canadian insights liaison to Aviva UK for performance reporting and demonstrate excellent listening skills to uncover business needs and translate them into research opportunities.
Team Leadership:
Lead and develop a high‑performing team of 4–5 research and insights professionals. Coach and mentor team members to build capability, engagement, and career growth. Provide hands‑on guidance on research design, insights development, presentations, and partner engagement. Ensure high‑quality outputs and timely delivery across all team activities, lead all aspects of resource planning and budget management.
What you’ll bring  
• 8–10 years of B2C research and insights experience, with deep knowledge of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and when to apply them.
• Proven experience with NPS measurement and reporting.
• Expertise in survey development, evaluation, and optimisation.
• Curiosity and knowledge of emerging research approaches, including AI‑enabled methodologies.
• People leadership experience highly desirable.
• Strong ability to synthesize data from surveys and third‑party sources into clear, compelling insights and present with confidence to senior stakeholders.
• Ability to define business objectives,…