Pricing Manager

Job Type:

Build a brilliant future with Hiscox
 

The team and role

The UK Pricing team are a fundamental part of the Hiscox UK business driving analytics and business insight that drives the direction of portfolio underwriting decisions. The UK Pricing team sits within a wider Portfolio Underwriting and Pricing function whose primary objective is to provide pricing and underwriting services across our UK retail business wait the aim of providing market leading risk selection and driving profitable growth across our portfolio. The team reports directly to the UK Chief Underwriting Officer and collaborates closely with the rest of Underwriting, Distribution, Operations, Marketing, Reserving and Finance. The pricing team itself are split into “Technical” and “Product Facing” analysts, with product facing pricing analysts having more of a focus on the monitoring, implementation and maintenance of production prices and working with senior stakeholders prioritise pricing activity aligned with the UK strategy.

This role sits within the product facing area of the team, you’ll be someone who loves stakeholder management and knowing the who’s who as you’ll be networking and talking to the wider business, including Product Heads, Heads of Underwriting, and our Chief Underwriting Officer to understand the priorities of the business. You’ll be comfortable presenting on technical subjects and making real decisions to shape the wider underwriting portfolio aligned with business objectives.

As a Pricing Manager, you’ll be responsible for leading a team of analysts in planning and delivering pricing projects and analysis to influence the growing book of non-standard high net worth household, motor, SME commercial as well as specialty lines. The Pricing Manager plays a critical role in defining the strategic direction of the product facing pricing team to deliver profitable growth for Hiscox UK as well as building pricing capability and core skills within the UK business.

Please note this role does not require you to pursue, or have previously pursued, actuarial qualifications.

What you’ll be doing

· Managing a team of five analysts. Providing development and coaching for all members of the team, sharing your own experience and expertise to support their development.

· Working closely with the Head of Portfolio Underwriting and Pricing to define and implement the strategy for the product facing pricing team to support delivery of the wider UK strategy.

· Taking accountability for the recommendations of the product facing pricing team and the performance of all pricing models produced by the team.

· Being the key point of contact for heads of underwriting and distribution as their connection into the wider portfolio underwriting and pricing team. Working alongside them in understanding how the wider function can support to deliver their key objectives and strategy and influencing to deliver against this.

· Overseeing the end-to-end architect of pricing changes that support delivering budgeted volume and profitability targets over the underwriting cycle. This includes conceptually designing the changes and modelling their financial and customer impacts, making recommendations directly to Heads of Underwriting, writing of governance committee papers and ensuring changes follow the full governance and change cycle to implementation.

· Driving the team to work with senior stakeholders on a monthly basis to further understand changing trends and analyse quote conversion, policy retention, customer behaviour, claims experience with the aim of driving real change into the business aligned with the UK strategy.

· Managing the maintenance and implementation of production prices for all UK products. Including delivery of simple pricing changes from end to end, testing of prices before and after implementation and working with change colleagues and business analysts to deliver more complex pricing changes.

· Working closely with the technical pricing team to ensure that technical pricing models (risk and demand) are developed to support the needs of the business and for use within pricing recommendations and analysis

· Applying knowledge of the underwriting cycle and the external insurance market to make pricing decisions.

· Applying knowledge of the regulatory environment to all pricing decisions and ensuring recommendations result in our customers being treated fairly and consistently in line with Hiscox values.

· Working with project teams to design pricing for new products and propositions for the UK business. Acting as the business change owner within the project and taking accountability to managing expectations and timelines for the pricing workstream.

· Work with and support the design and implementation of new technologies – including cloud-based data warehouses, data-visualisation products, and new pricing software for the business

· Managing the team to provide an independent review and recommendation for senior underwriting management on large individual case underwritten risks.

Person Specification:

Hiscox is a people orientated firm, no individual works in a silo and everyone is expected to work across the business and are empowered to make decisions. We are looking for an experienced pricing manager that is keen to engage across the business and understand different teams’ perspectives. With a firm focus of generating positive commercial outcomes. They will be leveraging the output from the technical pricing team and blending that with market conditions and business initiatives to support the ongoing growth and profitability of the firm.

You will be naturally inquisitive and comfortable to challenge the status quote, always looking for opportunities to drive continuous improvement of the pricing algorithm, working closely with the portfolio underwriting team to change the competitive footprint as market conditions emerges. You will be able to understand complex problems through a variety of perspectives and identify potential solutions that is fit for purpose and not overtly complicated. The role would suit an individual with a background in operational research or a similar branch of mathematics.

Our must haves:

· A broad knowledge of general insurance pricing across products and channels, with in depth knowledge of at least two products.

· Previous experience of managing (or supervising) a team of analysts

· Experience in building and understanding pricing models, and used to setting the core pricing assumptions

· Experience in the end-to-end analysis, recommendation and delivery of pricing proposals

· Ability to make, explain and influence decisions that can have a significant commercial and long-lasting impact

· Experience in balancing business needs against analytical quality

· Practical application of in-depth statistical skills within a business environment

· Strong analytical pragmatic reasoning skills and an aptitude for innovative problem solving

· Highly confident in the use data analysis tools such as Excel and SQL

· Knowledge of programming and statistical tools such as Python, Emblem & SAS

· High level of numeric competence and excellent data gathering and manipulation skills

· Experience of working closely with stakeholders and an ability to build strong working relationships

· Comfortable with carrying research and development projects experimenting with new data sources and modelling techniques.

· Excellent communication skills with ability to articulate the complex to technical and non-technical audiences

· Deadline oriented, hardworking, curious, passionate, enthusiastic and a self-starter

· Good knowledge of the regulatory and competitive environment

Our nice to haves:

· Insurance pricing software Earnix / Radar or equivalent

· Seeking or attained relevant professional qualifications

Diversity and flexible working at Hiscox

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We also understand that working life doesn’t always have to be ‘nine to five’ and we support flexible working wherever we can. No promises, but please chat to our resourcing team about the flexibility we could offer for this role.

We’ve introduced new hybrid ways of working to encourage a healthy work life balance.  We anticipate the successful candidate for this role will be in the office up to 2-3 days per week. Our London office will be your hub where team & collaboration time will take place.

We see it as the best of both worlds: structure and sociability on one hand, and independence and flexibility on the other.

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