Actuary - Ernst & Young

The EY UK Financial Services Non-Life Actuarial team has a track record of delivering market leading insights and value to our clients. Over the past 12 months, we have grown the UK retail (and UK commercial) part of our business through new audit wins and supporting clients in transforming their business in areas such as legal entity restructuring, replatforming and developing new pricing tools, mergers & acquisitions, market entry and reserving transformation.

We are looking for an experienced Actuary who can lead and grow further our retail (and UK commercial) business, looking to build on our successes. Our UK actuarial practice is a large team with a strong and exciting growth trajectory: Our actuarial team is the heartbeat of the EY Insurance team and key to unlocking new opportunities for the retail sector - there are opportunities to work alongside other Insurance professionals with different backgrounds to support all client needs.

Growing retail is a core part of our overall strategy to build on the significant investment from the EY firm to support UK retail. With support from UK leadership, we have plans to grow our footprint further in this space over the coming years.

Our Motor and Household Insurance Seminars provide insights and are noted by the Retail market as a differentiator and regularly discussed by our clients' C-suites and investors. There are significant opportunities to grow the portfolio linked to pricing, actuarial transformation, claims and wider analytics.

EY have a market leading transformation practice in Retail insurance and the actuarial team play an integral role in supporting this practice. We have also onboarded new Retail clients through audit transitions, which gives us access to market insights / key individuals at clients to build relationships and leverage our knowledge to consulting clients.

This growth is supported by a mature portfolio of annuity reserving / Audit revenue from the wider Non-Life Actuarial team. We place a great focus on our people and offer a great opportunity to learn and develop in a collaborative environment. At EY, you'll have the chance to build a career as unique as you are, with the global scale, support, inclusive culture and technology to become the best version of you.

The opportunity is to lead the Retail Actuarial team within EY, working closely with the UK Actuarial Partner group and Insurance community within EY. Retail has been a growth area of our business with the onboarding of a number of key audits and consulting engagements. We are looking for a leader who can consolidate and build on this growth in the coming years within the Consulting.

Your key responsibilities include:

• Elevate EY's Retail brand with our clients through a combination of Thought Leadership and external events.
• Business development; including the development of long-term trusted advisor relationships with our clients across the C-suite (CEO, CFO, CRO, and Chief Actuary).
• Lead large and complex engagements including audits from strategy to execution, whilst providing insights to our clients and working with other EY teams.
• Effectively leverage your knowledge and experience to support the delivery of key Actuarial projects, nurture valuable relationships both within EY and with clients, and develop strong capabilities through both formal training and working with senior mentors and talented colleagues.
• Build and lead high performing teams, coaching, mentoring and serving as a role model for our people, and supporting and fostering a positive learning culture.
• Contribute to the running of the Actuarial team, input into strategy and lead key initiatives.

Skills and attributes for success:

• Deep knowledge of the UK retail sector.
• Technical and Industry Expertise - Understanding of the current market and regulatory environment and how this is affecting General Insurance companies and their operating model.
• Strong client management skills to lead the dialogue with client project sponsors and fully manage expectations of delivery, content, timescales and cost.
• The ability to build and manage close client relationships.
• The ability to identify and mitigate risks on engagements.
• Drive and enthusiasm to lead combined with a desire to collaborate, whilst making your presence felt within our collegiate team.
• Development of ideas - Play your part in the development of intellectual property to support sales-oriented client interaction.
• People - Develop people through effectively supervising, coaching, and mentoring.

To qualify for the role you must have some or all of the following:

• Significant actuarial experience in leading-edge UK retail insurance (e.g. motor, household and/or other retail), gained through working for an insurer directly or a top tier consultancy or a specialist financial services consultancy.
• Strong academic record including a degree and professional actuarial qualifications (IFoA or similar).
• Have deep experience covering at least three of the following areas: Reserve reviews under different accounting bases for retail general insurance business; Actuarial analysis to support audits; Reserving process improvement and development work; Pricing - model development, review of segmentation and profitability, or process improvement; Development or review of Solvency II technical provisions and associated processes; The business planning process, linking reserving, pricing, claims and underwriting, or The review of Solvency II internal models and associated processes.
• Excellent leadership and interpersonal skills with demonstrable experience of building high performing teams and nurturing talent.
• Awareness of the emerging technology trends within the actuarial space.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, business writing and professional skills, including being able to liaise with both technical and business contacts at our clients.
• Ability to successfully deliver multiple engagements, exceed client expectations, manage commercial aspects (e.g. contracts, billing and budgets), and manage quality and risk.
• Ability to engage with senior stakeholders and manage large cross functional projects.
• Intellectual strength / flexibility to rapidly understand complex problems and rationalise these into workable solutions which can then be delivered.
• Be a problem solver; tailoring what you have learnt from your experiences to date to different client problems to help design and implement the solution.

We are looking for highly motivated individuals who are passionate about retail business, can apply actuarial approaches through a commercial lens and are excited to assist clients to solve difficult business problems to improve the way they operate.