Group Application Support Manager

Purpose of this role

We are looking for a Group Application Support Manager to lead the support, maintenance and continuous improvement of business-critical applications across Athora Group. This role is responsible for ensuring high-quality operational support, managing service performance against agreed SLAs and KPIs, and driving service excellence across a portfolio of Group applications, with a focus on Finance systems.

Working closely with Finance, IT, business stakeholders and strategic partners, the role-holder will play a key role in ensuring applications remain secure, resilient and aligned to business needs while supporting ongoing change and transformation initiatives.

Key Contribution Areas

• Manage the day-to-day operation and support of Group applications, ensuring services are delivered in line with agreed SLAs and KPIs.
• Lead the resolution of critical incidents, ensuring effective communication, root cause analysis and problem management activities.
• Build strong partnerships with Finance teams and act as a trusted technology partner for their critical platforms and systems.
• Drive continuous improvement across application support services, simplifying processes and reducing operational complexity.
• Maintain application support services in line with the Group Service Catalogue framework.
• Manage performance, security and operational alerts, ensuring timely resolution and compliance with internal standards.
• Oversee system access management, user recertification processes and software licence governance.
• Support change management activities, providing expertise and guidance on application and system changes.
• Manage relationships with internal teams, third-party vendors, contractors and managed service providers.
• Own the transition of new services into production, ensuring solutions are stable, documented and operationally ready.
• Support disaster recovery, business continuity and audit activities for finance systems, ensuring risk and audit actions are effectively managed and closed.
• Deliver clear service reporting and stakeholder communications, including engagement with senior leaders across the Group.

Personal Capabilities Required

• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships across business and technology teams.
• Effective people leadership and collaboration skills.
• Customer-focused with a strong service management mindset.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and communication skills.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment and adapting to changing priorities.
• Results-oriented, resilient and proactive in driving improvements and resolving issues.

Functional or Technical Knowledge and Skill Required

• Proven experience in Application Support and IT service management, ideally within financial services or insurance.
• Experience supporting business-critical finance applications, including ERP, financial reporting, consolidation, planning, treasury, accounting or actuarial systems (highly beneficial)
• Strong knowledge of incident, problem, change and service management, with the ability to drive process improvements and optimise support services
• Experience working with multiple IT service providers and solution integrators preferred.
• Degree-qualified in Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience. A finance or accounting qualification would be advantageous
• ITIL, Lean or Agile certification and experience with platforms such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP BPC or Tagetik would be beneficial

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