Finance Business Partner - Underwriting

General

Job description and person specification

Finance Business Partner - Underwriting - 6 Month FTC

Division: Finance – Financial Performance

Reports To: As per Beazley’s organisation chart

Key Relationships: Underwriting Teams, Executive Management, Finance Leadership Team, Chief Underwriting Office, Finance Performance, Finance Change, Finance Reporting, Accounting and Tax, Group Actuarial, Ceded Re, Group Auditors and other Business Users.

Job Summary: Reporting to the Lead Business Partner, this role is primarily responsible for providing comprehensive financial advice, support, and insight through servicing one or more underwriting related departments at Beazley through a dedicated business partnering offering. By building and maintaining strong relationships and collaborating with the business, this role aims to understand and address finance needs, helping the business achieve its commercial and operational goals aligned with Strategic Initiatives and the Value Realisation Framework.

Providing financial subject matter expertise for major projects across a range of products, departments, and services, the role involves advising on the operational need and the implications of proposals, ensuring that interdependencies and financial risks are identified and understood.

This role will create value by providing specialist data-led insights and becoming a subject matter expert advisor to counterparts, enabling them to make better decisions. 

Key Responsibilities:

Product Line Business Partnering

• Be the Finance relationship manager for one/multiple Underwriting related teams, along with partnering other areas and platforms of the business

• Work closely with Ceded Re to understand changes to reinsurance structures and ensure the impact on the financials is truly understood, documented and communicated to relevant personnel across the organisation

• Support the delivery of all budgets and forecast cycles to the underwriting teams and platforms across both IFRS 4 and IFRS 17 accounting standards

• Full ownership and sign off underwriting team(s) P&Ls, being able to articulate movements across all technical and non-technical items for all planning, forecasting and actual cycles, ensuring underwriting team leaders understand the drivers of their results

• Review, analyse and deliver a suite of underwriting MI to the underwriting team(s) and work with them to provide suitable commentary where appropriate

• Review of front office direct cost reports with both an efficiency and carbon footprint lens applied, including any additional investigation required in coordination with the Global Expense function 

• Ownership of the Premium Forecasting process for certain underwriting teams and platforms, ensuring appropriate review and sign off of the quarterly reserve release process run in coordination with Group Actuarial

• Support audit deliverables in relation to underwriting team substantive testing

• Assist in the production and submission of bi-annual profitability analysis for our internal coverholders, working with relevant stakeholders and forums to enhance the value of these reports for business decision making 

Strategic and Operational Change

• Work closely with the Strategic Finance and Finance Change team to ensure Finance is the forefront of business actions and can both influence and quickly react to a dynamic and changing environment

• Provide subject matter expert knowledge to strategically support projects within the wider organisation

• Review and enhance the current capability and offering and with the support of the Finance tech stack work towards future state

• Embed oneself within wider company activities and support various Finance and Underwriting team projects and initiatives

• Ad hoc requests from underwriting teams, Head of Financial Performance, Head of Business Partnering - Financial Performance

General

It is important that within all your interactions both internally and externally you adhere Beazley’s core values - Being Bold, Striving for Better, and Doing the Right Thing. We also expect Beazley employees to:  

• Comply with Beazley procedures, policies and regulations including the code of conduct 

• Undertake training on Beazley policies and procedures as delivered by your line manager, the Culture & People or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) either directly, via e-learning or the learning management system

• Display business ethics that uphold the interests of all our customers

• Ensure all interactions with customers are focused on delivering a fair outcome, including having the right products for their needs

• Comply with any specific responsibilities necessary for your role as outlined by your line manager, the Culture & People or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) and ensure you keep up to date with developments in these areas.  This may include, amongst others, Beazley’s underwriting control standards, Beazley’s claims control standards, other Beazley standards and customer relationship management

• Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system.  These may include membership of any Beazley committees or working groups

Personal Specification:

We are a flexible and innovative employer offering a friendly, collaborative,  diverse and inclusive working environment. We actively encourage and expect applications from all backgrounds. We empower people to choose where to work given the work they need to do. Collaboration in office spaces is important but we do not mandate a set number of days in the office or from home – you decide what works best for you and the role you are in.  Beazley will offer the person a competitive salary and discretionary bonus with a strong benefits package including commuting reimbursement, free in-office lunch, excellent parental leave and financial, physical and mental wellbeing contributions among others. 

Relevant qualifications and capabilities are listed as follows:

Education and Qualifications

• Qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA)

• Experience of the insurance market, preferably Lloyd’s

• Experience of business partnering within complex insurance organisations and knowledge of accounting policies adopted

Capabilities

• Customer focus / Stakeholder management / Relationship building

• Strong written and verbal communication skills

• Analytical and conceptual thinking

• Understanding of controls frameworks including documentation

• Problem solving / Decision making

• Negotiation and influencing 

• Creativity / Innovation

• Adaptability