Actuarial Manager

SUMMARY:
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POSITION INFO:

Purpose of the Role:

Our Actuarial Manager role is focused on delivering hands-on pricing and product development leadership within Dis-Chem Life’s R&D and Product environment. The role is designed for an actuary who combines strong technical pricing expertise with growing ownership, influence, and people leadership.

At Dis-Chem Life, Actuarial Managers remain deeply embedded in technical work while expanding their impact across product strategy, pricing governance, and cross-functional delivery. This is not a removed or purely managerial role, it is for an actuary who thrives in designing products, building pricing models, interrogating assumptions, and shaping real commercial outcomes, while also contributing to team leadership and capability building.

The role supports Dis-Chem Life’s ambition to develop innovative, customer-centric life insurance products by combining strong actuarial foundations with commercial thinking, collaboration, and disciplined execution.

Role Summary

As our Actuarial Manager you will take end-to-end actuarial ownership of specific product lines or initiatives, from concept and pricing design through to governance, monitoring, and optimisation.

You will remain highly involved in technical pricing, modelling, and assumption setting, while also acting as a key interface between Product, R&D, Finance, Risk, and Technology. The role requires a balance of deep actuarial expertise, structured thinking, and growing leadership capability.

This role is suited to a qualified Fellow with strong experience in pricing and product development who is ready to broaden scope, accountability, and influence while remaining deeply involved in technical actuarial work.

Key Responsibilities:

Product Development and Strategic Leadership

• Lead the design, enhancement, and optimisation of life insurance products across the value chain.
• Own product pricing strategies, ensuring alignment with customer needs, commercial objectives, and risk appetite.
• Partner with R&D, Marketing, Distribution, Operations, Finance, and Technology to deliver integrated product solutions.
• Provide strategic actuarial input into new product launches, enhancements, and market expansions.
• Translate complex actuarial insights into clear, actionable business recommendations.

Pricing, Profitability and Risk Oversight

• Take full accountability for pricing models, assumptions, and governance frameworks.
• Ensure products meet profitability, sustainability, and capital efficiency targets.
• Review and approve pricing bases, experience investigations, and assumption updates.
• Oversee underwriting, mortality, morbidity, and lapse risk assessments.
• Support enterprise risk management through actuarial insight and scenario analysis.

Actuarial Modelling, Analysis and Reporting

• Review and guide advanced actuarial modelling (pricing, profitability, reserving, projections).
• Ensure high standards of model governance, documentation, and peer review.
• Provide high-quality actuarial reporting to Exco, Board committees, and regulators.
• Ensure transparency and robustness of assumptions, methodologies, and limitations.

Regulatory and Professional Governance

• Ensure full compliance with SAM, IFRS 17, ASSA standards, and life insurance regulations.
• Act as a key actuarial contact for audits, regulatory reviews, and statutory submissions.
• Stay ahead of regulatory developments and proactively assess impact on products and pricing.

People Leadership and Capability Building

• Provide guidance, coaching, and technical oversight to actuarial analysts and junior team members.
• Review actuarial work for accuracy, robustness, and alignment to standards.
• Support actuarial exam progression and professional development within the team.
• Contribute to a collaborative, high-performance actuarial culture.

Innovation and Continuous Improvement

• Champion innovation in actuarial modelling, automation, and analytics.
• Leverage advanced data, predictive analytics, and emerging technologies to improve decision-making.
• Drive process improvements to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability.
• Support Dis-Chem Life’s ambition to deliver world-first insurance solutions.

Technical Skills:

• Qualified Actuary, FASSA required (recently qualified profiles strongly suited).
• Strong pricing and product development experience in life insurance.
• Advanced proficiency in actuarial pricing and modelling tools (e.g. Prophet, Excel, R, SQL, VBA).
• Solid understanding of SAM, IFRS 17, and South African life insurance regulations.
• Experience performing experience investigations and setting pricing assumptions.
• Comfortable working directly with large datasets and building transparent, well-governed models.

Leadership and Soft Skills: 

• Strong people leadership with the ability to coach and develop actuarial talent.
• Excellent communication skills, able to influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Commercially astute with a strong understanding of business strategy and customer value.
• High levels of integrity, professionalism, and ethical judgement.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and driving decisions in a fast-moving environment.
• Collaborative leadership style with the confidence to challenge constructively.

Experience:

• 4–7 years actuarial experience, primarily within life insurance pricing and product development.
• Strong hands-on experience in pricing model development, product design, and profitability analysis.
• Experience working closely with product, underwriting, and commercial teams.
• Demonstrated progression from actuarial analyst to senior specialist or equivalent level.
• Early-stage people leadership or mentoring experience (formal or informal).
• Exposure to pricing governance, assumption reviews, or regulatory submissions preferred.

Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
• Fellow of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (FASSA).
• Additional actuarial certifications advantageous.
• Ongoing commitment to professional development and industry leadership.