Head of Underwriting Direct

Working hours: 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday

Duration: Permanent

Location: Gloucester

Job Ref: 204890

About the role

Ecclesiastical Insurance, who are proudly part of Benefact Group, are looking for a Head of Underwriting Direct to join our Gloucester office. Are you ready to shape strategy, inspire people, and elevate performance at the heart of a unique and meaningful market? We’re looking for an experienced Head of Underwriting Direct to lead underwriting strategy, quality, and financial performance across our Direct portfolio. You’ll be the figurehead for technical excellence and owner of portfolio outcomes, proactively managing key accounts and coaching our Underwriting talent to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and exceptional retention.

In this influential leadership role within the Direct Team, you’ll set direction and pace driving portfolio results, shaping pricing at both portfolio and key account level, and driving the team to turn underwriting strategy into day-to-day delivery balancing commercial goals with good customer outcomes. If you want the opportunity to own and shape a core portfolio, have a proven senior UW track record, and a passion for balancing profitability with customer outcomes, we’d love to hear from you.

Why join us?

Join a collaborative and inclusive culture that’s committed to making a difference and building a more sustainable future. Ranked amongst the UK's 15 Best Big Companies to Work For in 2025, we offer fantastic career and development opportunities within a rapidly growing, innovative Group — where all profits go to charity and good causes.

What you'll be doing

• Portfolio performance: Own results across GWP, New Business, Retention, Rate Movement, and Profitability - balancing commercial targets with good customer outcomes.
• Pricing strategy: Shape pricing strategies at both portfolio and key account level.
• Business planning: Act as a lead contributor to planning, bringing incisive analysis and constructive challenge.
• Underwriting excellence: Set and maintain underwriting standards; actively engage with UK Underwriting Risk Appetite to ensure alignment and adherence.
• Authority framework: Use your own authority to best effect; cascade authority appropriately and govern it rigorously.
• Strategy into delivery: Translate UW strategy into day-to-day practice, challenging where needed to support customer needs and the business plan.
• Quality & audit: Lead the quality framework; meet audit and quality metrics or challenge and improve them where they are not fit for purpose - leaving clear, implementable actions.
• Competency & succession: Drive the underwriting competency framework, building capability and succession. Create and deliver technical training where relevant.
• Technical leadership: Act as the senior referral point, disseminate expertise, and keep your own technical edge sharp.
• Continuous improvement: Champion smarter underwriting processes and tools that optimise accuracy, speed, and underwriting quality.

Leadership & impact

• Develop and inspire: Coach, mentor, and stretch colleagues at all levels; set clear expectations and celebrate high performance.
• Build relationships: Collaborate and partner closely within own area and across UK business teams to optimise performance.
• Market voice: Represent underwriting matters confidently with internal stakeholders, key clients and market stakeholders.
• Do the right thing: Balance portfolio outcomes and customer in your decision making, operate within the regulatory framework.

What you'll need to have

• ACII (or equivalent) and a proven track record in a senior underwriting role.
• Strong portfolio management expertise and commercial fluency.

What makes you stand out

• A confident, influential communicator - credible at all levels internally and externally.
• Demonstrable coaching capability and a passion for developing others.
• The ability to apply critical thinking beyond standard guidelines and frame pragmatic, risk aware solutions.

How success will be measured?

• Delivery against GWP, retention, rate, and profitability targets.
• Evidenced improvements in quality/audit outcomes and referral turnaround.
• Capability uplift and succession depth against the competency framework.
• Stakeholder feedback from key accounts and internal partners.

What we offer

• A competitive salary - let's discuss it.
• Hybrid working.
• Group Personal Pension - up to 12% employer contribution.
• Generous annual bonus scheme: on-target bonus between 10% and 40%.
• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays, and a holiday buy and sell scheme.
• An array of health and wellbeing benefits, including private healthcare, income protection and life assurance.
• £200 annual personal grant to a charity of your choice.
• Encouraged to take at least one volunteering day per year.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Full study support to gain professional qualifications.
• Access to virtual GP.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.

About us

Ecclesiastical Insurance offer insurance with award-winning service across a broad range of specialisms, including faith, charity, heritage, education, art and private client, real estate and schemes, across Ireland, Canada and the UK. As a business, we’ve been trusted to protect some of the UK’s best-loved and most iconic buildings for over a century, and we’re not standing still. We’re a forward thinking, energetic organisation entering new markets, with an ambition to double our size, because when we grow, we give back more. Benefact Group is a unique international financial services Group made up of over 30 businesses. We are owned by a charity and have been the 3rd largest UK corporate donor over a decade, having given away £250 million since 2014. We have ambitious plans to become the UK’s number one corporate donor, with strategic objectives in place to double the Group’s size. We believe it’s essential to attract, empower, grow and reward talented people, offering fantastic opportunities for career and personal development. Our giving ethos, 135-year history and the diversity of what we do, has enabled us to build a culture of kindness, great ambition, and of passionate people driven to do better and be better. At Benefact Group, we are committed to creating an inclusive culture and building an environment where each and every one of us feels valued and respected. We are a community made up of people with a range of different backgrounds, abilities, perspectives, beliefs and interests and we value the strength this brings to us as a Group. We welcome applications from everyone. If you need any additional support during the recruitment process, then please let us know.