Development Underwriter

TN United Kingdom; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a talented underwriter to join their Commercial Property Owners team. This role offers a unique opportunity to work with a diverse range of clients, from residential buildings to innovative technology companies. You'll be responsible for underwriting complex cases and managing broker relationships, driving profitable growth in a fast-paced environment. The company values diversity and promotes a hybrid working model, allowing you to balance office presence with personal flexibility. If you have a strong background in property underwriting and a passion for building relationships, this role is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• Strong property underwriting experience and adaptability to switch between business types.
• Excellent relationship management and negotiation skills.

Responsibilities

• Underwrite Property Owners schemes and manage broker relationships.
• Identify and improve poorly performing accounts for profitable growth.

Skills

Property Underwriting Experience

Analytical Skills

Relationship Building

Negotiation Skills

Communication Skills

Insurance Market Knowledge

Understanding of Schemes

Education

Diploma CII

Job description

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Hiscox UK is a leading brand in the insurance market, recognised as setting the standards others try to emulate. We consistently deliver strong growth and exceptional returns, recruiting only the very best and empowering them to deliver. We are known for insuring the homes of the rich and famous through to the most innovative technology companies. Our customers are diverse and unique and are only united by our ability to provide specialist insurance tailored to their needs.

The role

The Commercial Property Owners (CPO) team are based across the UK and insure UK commercial and residential buildings, usually as part of large property portfolios. Our open market business doubled in 2023 and has continued well into 2024, while our schemes business is poised to quadruple in size in 2024 with new schemes coming online. We seek a fourth underwriter to join CPO who – in the short term - can support growth on both sides of our business and long term align fully with the schemes accounts.

Initially your work will be split across our open market and schemes accounts, engaging with brokers directly on new and existing business as demand dictates. This will be a fast moving and fluid position in our team, getting involved in large and small policies and working with brokers to maintain and grow our business. As new schemes are brought online this role will focus on schemes, where you will be responsible for managing and developing those relationships and servicing any new business, renewals or MTAs which fall outside of a Coverholder’s delegated authority.

At all times, you will work alongside the Head of Property Owners, the open market underwriters and our scheme underwriter to drive the profitable growth of the CPO business.

What you’ll be doing:

• You will underwrite our Property Owners schemes within the Commercial Property Owners team, working on products which include Buildings, Loss of Rent, Property Owners Liability, Engineering Breakdown, Terrorism and more to achieve overall business GWP targets
• You’ll underwrite new and existing business with a focus on larger, more complex cases, either in the open market or from our CPO schemes
• Account managing your brokers, working with them to develop and execute annual business plans using a deep understanding of the brokers’ business to achieve growth targets
• Taking overall responsibility for Hiscox’s relationship with your brokers – delivering profitable growth across your panel
• Identifying poorly performing open market and scheme accounts and identify measures to improve their business with Hiscox e.g. commission levels, profit improvement plans, retention and conversion improvements
• Driving new business opportunities by regularly meeting your brokers, building a strong relationship with the individuals there and delivering a super service to them
• Contributing positively towards our annual Sales and Underwriting Audits

Our must-haves

• A strong property underwriting experience
• Comfort in analysing, making and executing underwriting recommendations on individual and portfolios of business
• An adaptable mindset, able to happily switch between open market and schemes business, new and existing business
• Great relationship building, influencing and negotiation skills
• Strong communication, relationship management and interpersonal skills
• Good knowledge of the insurance market, industry, competitors, Brokers and factors that can affect the market including soft/hard markets
• Either previous experience underwriting schemes business, or a strong understanding of schemes and how they are operated successfully
• Ideally Diploma CII qualified or exempt through relevant experience as defined by the FCA

Diversity and Hybrid working

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 have also learned over the past few years that working life doesn’t always have to be in the office, and now it is safe to do so we have introduced hybrid working to encourage a healthy work life balance.

We anticipate the successful candidate for this role will be in the office up to 2 days per week in either our Colchester, Manchester or York office.

This hybrid working model is set by the team rather than the business to enable you to manage your own personal work-life balance. 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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Work with amazing people and be part of a unique culture