Risk Actuary

Position: Risk Actuary (qualified)
Reporting to: Lead Risk Actuary
Location: London or York-based, with flexible working options

Role description:

Reporting to the Lead Risk Actuary and as a part of the Group Risk team, the Risk Actuary specialises in technical and actuarial areas of the risk management framework; specifically model validation, Stress and Scenario Testing, quantification of Risk Appetite and Limits, as well as exposure analysis and risk and control monitoring and reporting.

This role offers an exciting opportunity to be involved and strengthen skills in broader Enterprise Risk Management. You will drive the delivery of key risk actuarial outputs and actively helping the first line enhance and embed a comprehensive but proportional internal controls environment. You will have exposure to all key business areas in the Group, with a focus on Hiscox's Lloyd's Syndicates, and you will enjoy wide-ranging responsibility, primarily delivering model validation which meets both internal and external standards. You will develop meaningful, collaborative business working relationships to influence, challenge and verify risk decision-making, propelling the Risk team's remit. You will balance input from different stakeholders to facilitate innovative risk outcomes that meet a range of requirements.

You will be an active participant in the Group Risk team, contributing thought leadership on risk management across the group and leveraging the wider team for support and advice as needed. The role provides support across the Group, business units and carriers and will have exposure to the Group Risk Director as well as the Group Chief Risk Officer.

The Team:

The Risk team is responsible for facilitating the implementation, delivery and oversight of Hiscox's Risk Management Framework which includes risk appetites, emerging risks and incident capture and analysis operating to a three lines of defence risk management model. As a second line function, the Risk team balances its role of supporting the business with its responsibility to provide credible, effective challenge. The team produces high profile reporting that is seen by Executives, Boards and Risk Committees both at a Group level and for subsidiary legal entities. In some instances this reporting is also provided to regulators.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead and execute key areas of risk quantification work along with the risk actuarial team such as: Communicating with senior stakeholders from all areas of the Group on risk management and risk quantification aspects
  • Model validation of the internal capital and risk models across the Group (including for Lloyd's syndicates). This will include reviewing primary validation tests and develop and perform secondary validation tests for all components of the internal models; understanding and challenging key assumptions, methodologies and limitations of the models, preparing validation reports and communicating findings to modelling teams
  • Aggregate stress and scenario testing exercises across the Group as part of the ORSA process
  • Risk Appetite and risk limits setting
  • Analysis of risk profile and associated exposure
• Preparing presentations and reports for Management, Boards and Risk Committees
• Developing business stakeholder relationships as a key point of contact on risk management issues, and work cohesively with the broader risk function including the Capital Management, Reserving and Modelling teams, whilst maintaining second line of defence challenge
• Keeping up to date with emerging actuarial techniques, risks, regulatory requirements and risk management trends

Qualification / Technical experience

• A qualified actuary or equivalent experience with strong quantitative and analytical skills, experienced in capital and risk modelling, risk appetite and model validation.
• In-depth risk and actuarial professional and commercial knowledge.
• Proven ability to solve problems and put forward new ideas.
• Highly developed communication skills to work with people at all levels and ability to communicate technical concepts in non-technical commercial language.
• Strong understanding and experience of Solvency II and equivalent regulatory actuarial and risk requirements and related reporting.
• Knowledge of key risk types as they apply to retail / commercial (re)insurance.
• Experience producing risk reporting and presenting to stakeholders including senior management / Board members.
• Experience leading projects or teams.
• Ability to identify and articulate emerging actuarial issues and external risk trends.
• Advance Excel, Access, VBA capabilities and ability to improve and automate Excel-based tasks and processes e.g. using VBA coding.