Senior Actuary (Retirement team) in London

Location: London

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation. Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.

Job Purpose

There is an opportunity for a qualified actuary to join the Retirement team which looks after Individual annuities and ERM lines of business. Successful applicants will be responsible for driving forward commercial initiatives within the team by working closely with Proposition, Pricing and Distribution teams.

Key Accountabilities

• Support technical pricing by analysing the Retirement market.
• Analyse large amounts of data and feed into and help to develop pricing strategies.
• Support development of reinsurance terms for individual annuities including producing regular MI pack.
• Manage stakeholders in progressing commercial initiatives.
• Keep abreast of industry issues and developments to ensure business processes and strategies are in line with the industry.
• Support upgrading annuity pricing models from Excel into R, Python and Databricks.
• Support production of monthly new business profitability metrics.
• Develop and lead a team of actuarial students.

Desired Knowledge / Experience / Skills

Technical Expertise

• Strong knowledge of UK regulatory regime, SII and IFRS 17.
• Familiarity with individual annuity market and products.
• Understanding of capital modelling and profit testing.
• Strong communication skills (able to communicate technical issues to senior people including non-actuaries).
• Understanding and ability to implement/maintain an actuarial control framework.
• Qualified actuary.
• Familiar with R and Python coding languages.

Communication

• Excellent analytical and report writing/drafting skills.
• Can explain complexities in a straightforward and accurate way to audiences of differing levels of understanding, with some coaching or support from senior managers.
• Proven communication, influencing and negotiation skills, adapting the message to the audience, demonstrating the ability to share knowledge with the business in a format that is easily understood, balancing the need for required detail with higher level information.

Relationship Building

• The ability to develop and maintain strong relationships across the actuarial function, acting with integrity and role-modeling the company values at all times, to support the organisation in achieving its goals and mitigating the organisations' exposure to risk.
• Being able to flex style and approach to different individuals, with occasional support, to achieve a successful outcome.

Leadership

• Willing and capable of taking decisions independently to progress issues, exercising sound judgement and commercial sense to understand the importance of different issues and assess when matters need to be escalated.
• Track record of leading small teams, with the ability to manage, develop and motivate a team of technical actuarial staff.
• Effective planning, organising and execution of own work (and the work of others) with minimal supervision, using sound judgement to spot conflicting priorities and readjust workload accordingly, escalating to management only when appropriate.
• Identify opportunities for improving processes and pricing, and competently analyse and communicate these to line management.

Developing Self

• An interested and inquisitive individual committed to ongoing professional and personal development.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of the needs of the business, able to apply technical actuarial techniques and understand business/commercial implications.

Qualifications

• Fellow of Institute of Actuaries (or equivalent).

Benefits of working at Canada Life

We believe in recognising and rewarding our people, so we offer a competitive salary and benefits package that is regularly reviewed. As a Canada Life UK colleague, you’ll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive reward package including a generous pension and bonus scheme, along with income protection, private medical insurance and life assurance. We have a fantastic number of other benefits and support services as well as regular personal and professional development.

How we work at Canada Life

Our culture is unique and incredibly important to us. We care about doing the right thing for our people, customers and community and helping others to build better futures. Our blueprint behaviours shape and influence how we work, and are central to the relationships we have with others. Every day we are encouraged to be more curious, own the outcome, face into things together and find a way forward. We want colleagues to have rewarding careers with us, so we invest in the development of our people, technology and workplaces. That’s why we offer a range of training, flexible working and opportunities to grow and develop.

Diversity and inclusion

Building an inclusive workplace with a diverse workforce where everyone can feel they belong and achieve their potential regardless of gender, ethnicity or any other characteristic is a key commitment for us. We are proud of the progress we are making in DEI, and we continue to focus on it.

“At Canada Life we believe in the power of great people from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives coming together to build better futures. Emerging talent is crucial to our growth and creating an environment that continues to inspire us all.” Nick Harding, Chief People Officer, Canada Life UK

We appreciate that everyone has different work and life responsibilities. We’re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements, including part time, for any of our roles should this be a requirement for you.