Divisional Actuary - Casualty

Overview

About us

Starr is a global insurance and investment organisation providing property and casualty insurance solutions to business and industry. Starr has grown into one of the world’s fastest‑expanding insurance organisations, writing business in 128 countries across six continents. Our talented and experienced associates manage risk and ultimately support the profitable growth of organisations in a dynamic, competitive and ever-changing marketplace. Join us and become part of our talented and passionate workforce.

In London, Starr operates at the heart of the global specialty insurance market. Through our Lloyd’s platform and company market presence, we bring together deep underwriting expertise, strong broker relationships and meaningful capacity across a broad range of classes. 

We work in close partnership with brokers and clients, combining data, insight and experience to respond quickly, cut through complexity and deliver clear, practical solutions. It’s a fast-moving environment, where responsiveness, clarity and consistency define how we meet the moment.

Role Purpose

We are looking for a candidate with strong expertise and best practice knowledge to lead the specification, stewardship and governance of the pricing models and processes used for Casualty business across Starr’s US and International operations. The divisional role covers General Liability, Environmental Liability, and Primary and Excess placements, across direct & facultative and delegated business.

The role is a senior technical pricing contact for Casualty across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), LATAM and APAC, and reports to the Chief Pricing Actuary, International. As a Divisional Pricing Actuary in the Core Pricing Team, it is the service delivery lead for Casualty, drawing on a pooled analyst resource allocated to where business need is greatest, and works with Technical Pricing, who build and deploy the models on the pricing platform.

Key Responsibilities

Models and methodology

• Lead the specification, calibration and stewardship of pricing models and processes for Casualty business, including the global pricing models deployed across the US and International, with Technical Pricing building and deploying them on the pricing platform;
• Hold ultimate accountability for these models: own methodology, parameter and low-level code updates, and back-test review and sign-off, ensuring consistency across regions while allowing appropriate local adaptation, and agree changes that affect the US with the US pricing team; significant structural changes and new builds go through Technical Pricing;
• Develop and maintain casualty methodology, including experience and exposure rating, loss development and trend selection, increased limit factor (ILF) curve calibration, large loss loads, and the treatment of claims-made versus occurrence and clash;
• Develop and maintain a Starr view of casualty risk, including loss and social inflation, latent and emerging exposures, and perils or features that cannot be modelled directly;
• Work closely with Reserving so that pricing assumptions (development patterns, trend, loss ratios) are consistent with reserving, and feed back actual-versus-expected experience;
• Work with Technical Pricing, the US pricing team, and data and IT colleagues on the pricing model roadmap, defining Casualty requirements for model build and migration on the pricing platform;
• Identify internal and external data sources, and specify pricing templates and models for use by underwriters;
• Work closely with the Exposure Management team to monitor casualty aggregations and clash scenarios, and use scenario or catastrophe model output where relevant to event-driven exposures;
• Act as expert adviser to underwriters using the pricing software, train them on the models, and specify bespoke features for Technical Pricing to build as required;

Pricing support across International

• Support pricing-related topics for Casualty across International, covering EMEA, LATAM and APAC, across General Liability, Environmental Liability, and Primary and Excess placements, including direct & facultative and delegated business;
• Conduct case pricing reviews across Casualty and other lines of business, as required, and challenge underwriters on technical assumptions, including policy wording, coverage triggers, limits and attachment points, and bespoke coverage;
• Lead pricing approaches for delegated authority, facility and MGA business, reflecting the economics of different distribution channels;
• Reflect local market conditions, legal environment, data, currency and inflation in pricing across regions;
• Propose rate changes and conduct impact analyses, as required;
• Present proposals to senior stakeholders in various committees and obtain sign-offs;

Portfolio, capital and performance

• Monitor and report pricing metrics (e.g. pricing adequacy, risk-adjusted rate change (RARC) etc.);
• Develop MI to identify underperforming segments;
• Make a significant contribution to portfolio optimisation and capital allocation workstreams;
• Be part of the feedback loop between annual planning cycle, reserving, pricing and capital, with particular attention to long-tail loss ratio and development assumptions;
• Develop strong communication and collaboration with underwriters, capital and reserving across regions;
• Support the capital team in validating internal model assumptions for the relevant entities;

Governance and regulatory

• Ensure all regulatory requirements from Lloyd’s, PRA and FCA impacting Starr’s pricing function, and relevant local requirements in the regions covered, are known and addressed, working with Compliance as appropriate;
• Contribute to Actuarial Function Reports (AFRs) as required;
• Deliver additional analysis and documentation that may be required;

Working within the pricing function

The role sits in the Core Pricing Team, which owns business-facing class pricing and the stewardship of its models. It works alongside Technical Pricing and the Pricing Development Lead. Day-to-day pricing must not depend on Technical Pricing availability.

• Case and portfolio pricing, technical and market pricing models, and calibration to reduce bias and noise;
• Review of underwriting adjustments, and pricing controls in all models;
• Model stewardship, including ultimate model accountability, BAU database interrogation, parameter updates, back-test review and sign-off, and adherence to pricing policies;
• Business partnership: primary underwriting contact for Casualty in International, representing Pricing at the Pricing Committee and underwriting forums, and supporting Finance, Risk and Capital;
• Analytics: Casualty MI design and delivery, identifying automation and AI opportunities, and class-specific regulatory queries;

Interfaces

• Technical Pricing: this role specifies models and approves releases; Technical Pricing builds, tests and deploys them, and owns the platform, APIs and data infrastructure;
• Pricing Development Lead: pricing governance policies, regulatory and AFR preparation, business planning coordination and function-wide MI;
• Contribute to pricing data quality and remediation for Casualty, working with Operations and Underwriting;
• Support recruitment, training and development across the wider pricing team, as requested by the function lead.

People and leadership

• Line manage and develop the analysts reporting to the role, setting objectives, managing performance and building capability, and lead service delivery for Casualty across the pooled analyst resource;
• Integrate existing and new team members into a cohesive team, including supporting recruitment and onboarding;
• Coach and mentor other junior members of the wider pricing team.

The above duties and responsibilities are not an exhaustive list, and you may be required to undertake other reasonable duties compatible with your experience and competencies. This description may be varied from time to time to reflect changing business requirements.

Conduct Rules

All employees are subject to the following regulatory conduct rules:

• You must act with integrity.
• You must act with due care, skill and diligence.
• You must be open and cooperative with the FCA, the PRA and other regulators.
• You must pay due regard to the interests of customers and treat them fairly.
• You must observe proper standards of market conduct
• You must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers

Qualifications, skills and experience

Essential

• Actuarial skills at the level of a qualified UK actuary (FIA or equivalent);
• Experience of pricing Casualty business, with exposure to more than one of General Liability, Environmental Liability, and Primary and Excess placements;
• Working knowledge of casualty pricing methods, including experience and exposure rating, loss development, trend and inflation, and increased limit factors;
• Pricing knowledge of Delegated Authority contracts and large open market accounts, with an understanding of contract wording and distribution channels;
• Proficiency in R or Python, and SQL, for modelling and analysis;
• Understanding of dedicated pricing platforms, and of how pricing models are built and deployed on them;
• Prior experience of line managing and developing a team;
• Knowledge and skills relating to the management of insurance data; and
• Strong written and face to face communication skills, including the ability to influence senior stakeholders across regions and time zones.

Desirable

• Experience contributing to the management of a pricing function, beyond a single class or division;
• Experience of pricing US casualty, or across more than one region or market, including outside the UK;
• Experience of working with global or multi-entity pricing models;
• Hands-on experience of building models in a dedicated pricing platform (for example Hx);
• Experience of using scenario or catastrophe model output for event-driven casualty exposures, such as environmental;
• Experience of machine learning techniques and emerging risk assessment in a pricing context.

Core behavioural expectations

• Analysis and decision making
• Innovation and problem solving
• Strategic perspective
• Commerciality
• Communication and influence
• Development of self and others

Additional Information

• A full job description can be seen here

Starr is an equal opportunity employer, which means we will consider all suitably qualified applicants regardless of gender identity or expression, ethnic origin, nationality, religion or beliefs, age, sexual orientation, disability status or any other protected characteristic. We recruit and develop our people based on merit and we're committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We offer first class training and development opportunities to all employees. Our aim is to grow our own talent and bring out the best in people.

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