Head of Finance Practice, with a strong background in customer experience research

Head of Finance Practice, with a strong background in customer experience research

Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Practice: Finance

Reporting to: CEO

Working model: Semi-hybrid

Eligibility: This is a local position on local terms, open to both Vietnamese nationals and expats already based in Vietnam.

ABOUT DECISION LAB

Decision Lab is an insights-driven consulting firm helping organisations in Southeast Asia turn opportunity into intentional, innovation-led growth by making better commercial decisions in fast-changing markets.

We attract some of the most ambitious people in our industry, and we have built the firm around them: a place for ambitious, curious minds to do work that changes what clients decide, and to go further here than they would elsewhere.

ABOUT THE ROLE

You will lead Decision Lab's Finance practice and own its P&L.

The practice works with leading banks, insurers, consumer-finance businesses and fintechs across Vietnam and the region. Our thesis is straightforward: the race for new customers is largely over, and the next decade of banking growth comes from relationship value, meaning primary status, daily usage, and the affluent and mass-affluent segments that carry the economics. That shift changes the decisions on a bank CEO's desk, and those are the decisions we work on.

Our work spans primary-relationship and CASA driver studies, brand health tied to commercial outcomes, affluent and wealth proposition testing, and customer experience measurement. We publish an annual Bank Customer Satisfaction Rankings, an independent external benchmark banks cannot generate from their own dashboards, alongside syndicated research on the financial decision journey.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS ONE OF OUR GROWTH PILLARS, AND IT IS WHERE WE WANT THIS HIRE TO ADD CAPABILITY

Digital transformation is now table stakes in Vietnamese banking, and satisfaction has become the competitive battleground. Our own rankings put the top four banks within five points of each other. Clients are moving from tracking satisfaction to diagnosing journeys and acting on drivers.

We have the foundations: an established satisfaction benchmark, a partnership with Alchemer, and working relationships with several specialist CX platform vendors. What we want is someone who deepens that competency inside the team, bringing methodological confidence across the full arc of a CX programme, and building it into how the practice sells and delivers.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• The Finance practice P&L: revenue, margin, growth

• Sector strategy and the commercial direction of the practice

• Senior client relationships across banking, insurance, consumer finance and fintech, as the trusted adviser clients call first

• New business: pipeline, proposals and pricing

• Deepening Decision Lab's CX capability and converting it into client work

• Growing paid engagements from our satisfaction rankings and syndicated finance intelligence

• Quality and commercial oversight of the practice's major engagements

• Building the practice's leadership bench, developing project leaders rather than only managing analysts

• Method and innovation in the sector: new approaches, AI-enabled research, and better answers reached faster

• Decision Lab's authority in the sector through thought leadership and industry visibility

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• A strong financial-services background, built inside a bank, insurer or consumer-finance business, or advising them from an insights, strategy or consulting firm

• 8+ years of relevant experience, including 2 to 3 years at a leading market research firm. Agency-side experience is essential: it is where commercial leadership, proposal ownership and P&L discipline are built

• Functional depth in insights, strategy or customer experience, and the judgement to know which of the three a client problem actually needs

• Hands-on experience with customer experience research: designing it, running it, and turning the results into decisions clients act on

• Evidence you can convert credibility into commercial results: proposals won, relationships grown, revenue built

• Comfort owning a P&L and being measured on it

• The instinct to build a practice strategy rather than execute someone else's

WHAT YOU WILL GET

• P&L ownership of an established practice with a strong client base and an independent public benchmark behind it

• Direct access to senior decision-makers across Vietnam's financial-services sector

• Autonomy to shape the practice's commercial direction

• A total target salary built from monthly salary, bonus at target, and a monthly employer contribution to a long-term savings account in your name, run with Dragon Capital

• A performance bonus weighted towards the commercial results you own, paid quarterly

• 17 days annual leave, rising with tenure, plus recharge days and a protected recovery day after any project that took your weekend

• Private health insurance

• A personal learning budget, AI tooling and leadership training

• One day a week working from home, and pre-approved days working from your hometown

• A collaborative workspace at The Sentry, Ho Chi Minh City